Susan Porter

Areas of Expertise

History; Oral History; Public History; Gender Studies; Museum Planning and Interpretation

Email: sporter@brandeis.edu

Current Project

Susan is currently completing a book, Gendered Benevolence: Orphan Asylums in Antebellum America, about the experiences of the 1400 children who lived in several orphanages established in the United States before 1820.  She is also working on a new project about genteel urban boarding houses in nineteenth-century America.

Biography

A member of the faculty at the Harvard University Extension School, Susan Porter is an historian and an experienced museum professional. While her primary research fields are nineteenth-century American social history, women’s history, and child welfare history, she also plans, researches, and implements museum interpretations, exhibitions, and oral history projects.  Susan’s academic appointments include two fellowships at Radcliffe (1989-90; 1997-1999), and an Associate Professorship of History at Simmons College (1990-1997). Her public history work includes a position as Research Manager at Historic New England (2000-2005) and consulting for a variety of organizations and institutions. She has published several articles and book reviews, and an edited book, Women of the Commonwealth, Work, Family, and Social Change in Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).  She is the co-author of Becoming American Jews, Temple Israel of Boston, 1854-2004.

Education

Ph.D., Boston University

M.A., University of Massachusetts

A.B., Smith College

Representative Publications

Porter, Susan.  “A Good Home: Indenture and Adoption in American Orphanages, 1800-1850.”  Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives.  Ed. E. Wayne Carp.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Porter, Susan.  “Gendered Expectations Orphans and Apprenticeship in Antebellum New England.” Worlds of Children. Dublin Seminar for New England FolkLife, 2004.

Links

Curriculum Vitae