EDUCATION
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Laura J. Ping
Historian, Writer, Professor
Email:
I am a historian of the nineteenth-century United States, with a specialization in women and gender. I am particularly interested in the ways in which appearance was linked to power.
I am an Assistant Professor of U.S. History at Bellarmine University.
My research examines the connections between fashion and politics, particularly in the ways in which the social power of dress shaped gender, class, and racial identities. I am also interested in material and visual culture as evidence for understanding evolving American culture. My book manuscript Beyond Bloomers: Fashioning Change in Nineteenth-Century Dress explores case studies of women who protested unequal gender roles by abandoning fashionable dresses in favor of loose clothing, specifically trousers and modified underwear (popularly known as dress reform). This book demonstrates that dress reform was more widely accepted when it was adopted for function rather than as a symbol of women’s rights. In striving to achieve gender equality through dress reform, however, this movement excluded minority women for whom fashion was power.
I am also the co-author of Catharine Beecher: The Complexity of Gender in Nineteenth-Century America, a biography of education reformer Catharine Beecher, which will be published by Routledge in 2023. My article "A Tale of Two Bloomer Costumes: What Mary Stickney's and Meriva Carpenter's Bloomers Reveal about Nineteenth Dress Reform" was published in Dress, the journal of the Costume Society of America, in 2021 and my article entitled “ ‘He May Sneer at the Course We are Pursuing to Gain Justice': Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, The Sibyl and Corresponding about Women's Suffrage” was published in the Summer/Fall 2017 issue of New York History Journal.
2018
PhD
The Graduate Center, CUNY
New York, NY
History
Minor: Women's History
2013
MPhil
The Graduate Center, CUNY
New York, NY
History
Minor: Women's History
2007
MA
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA
History
Focus: The Civil War
2005
BA
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA
History
Certificates
2018 Writing in the Disciplines, CUNY
2005 Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Iowa
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY
2022-Present
Assistant Professor
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Making American Identity: Gender, Race and Sexuality in U.S. History.
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U.S. History, 1492-1877.
George Washington Teacher Institute
Mount Vernon, VA
2020-Present
Lead Scholar
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Martha Washington and the Women of the 18th Century
Gettysburg College-Gilder Lehrman
MA in American History
(Formerly with Pace University)
New York, NY
2018-2022
Adjunct Assistant Professor
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Thesis/Capstone Course (Lead Scholar)
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The Fight for Women's Rights
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Black Women's History
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Women and the American Revolution
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The History of American Protest
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Social Change in the Civil War Era
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The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
Queens College, City University of New York
New York, NY
2016-2022
Adjunct Assistant Professor
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The Making of American Identity: Race, Gender and Sexuality in U.S. History (writing intensive)
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Fashion and Politics in U.S. History (writing intensive and honors courses)
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Women in American History, 1600-1880
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Women in American History, 1800-Present (Cross-listed MA)
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Writing And History (writing intensive)
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Fashion, Gender, and Society in U.S. History, 1776-Present
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US History: Reconstruction Through the Present, 1865-Present
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US History: Jamestown Through the Civil War, 1607-1865
Meriva Carpenter dress reform garment
(possibly an example of the American Costume)
Cortland County Historical Society, Homer, New York
Mary Stickney Bloomer Costume
San Diego History Center, San Diego, California
SELECTED TEACHING
Books
Cindy R. Lobel and Laura J. Ping. Catharine Beecher: The Paradoxes of Gender in the Nineteenth Century, Lives of American Women Biography Series, Carol Berkin, ed. Philadelphia: Routledge (forthcoming 2023).
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
2021 ““A Tale of Two Bloomer Costumes: What Mary Stickley and Meriva Carpenter’s Bloomers Reveal About Nineteenth-Century Dress Reform.” Dress (July 2021): 139-153.
2017 “‘He May Sneer at the Course We are Pursuing to Gain Justice': Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck, The Sibyl and Corresponding about Women's Suffrage,” New York History Journal 98, no. 3-4 (Summer/Fall 2017), 317-328.
In Preparation
Beyond Bloomers: Fashioning Change in the Long Nineteenth-Century Book Mss
“Foes, Flags, and Jeff Davis Bonnets: Women’s Use of Textiles as Tools of War in Winchester, Virginia During the American Civil War, 1861-1865.”
“Nineteenth-Century Moral and Social Reform Through Women’s Clothing: Annie Jenness-Miller and ‘Correct Dress.’”
Blog Posts
2022 " The Curious Case of Elizabeth Smith Miller and the Jenness-Miller Magazine Letterhead," The New York Public Library Blog (September 23).
2021 “Insurrections Old and New: Teaching Perspective on the Events of January 6, 2021,” Muster: How the Past Informs the Present, the Journal of the Civil War Era (March 9).
2017 “Clothes as Historical Sources: What Bloomers Reveal About the Women Who Wore Them,” AHA Today: A Blog of the American Historical Association (February 13).
Research on Dress Reform
SKILLS
Microsoft ExCel - Advanced
Power Point - Advanced
Microsoft Word - Advanced
EXPERTISE
Material Culture
Visual Culture
Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines