JOINED THE DEPARTMENT
2018
BIO
Ann’s research focuses on women's contributions to the late nineteenth century American reform movement of Populism. She is interested in employing microhistory to explore the experiences of women within the Populist movement, looking at a myriad of topics such as their family dynamics, their interaction with the male elite of the movement, their interpretations and uses of Populist ideology in their work, their reform tactics, and the constraints and controversies they grappled with inside and outside the movement. She is especially interested in how individuals dealt with the rapid decline of the movement, for this raises larger issues of the continuity of Populism within subsequent Gilded Age & Progressive Era reform movements. Therefore, Ann also seeks to place Populism and its legacy of women’s involvement within the larger perspective of nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century reform history.