Contact
Research Areas
American History; Public History/Museum Studies; Oral History; Gender Studies; Jewish History
Education
Ph.D., Boston University
M.A., University of Massachusetts
A.B., Smith College
Links
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Susan Porter
Susan Porter
Susan Porter is an historian whose primary research fields are nineteenth-century American social history, gender history, child welfare history, and synagogue history. An experienced public historian/museum consultant who researches families and buildings for historic house museums and plans and implements museum interpretations, exhibitions, and oral history projects, she is currently doing a project for the National Park Service at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, Vermont.
Susan has been affiliated with the museum studies program at the Harvard Extension School since 2005. She has held several faculty positions and was Associate Professor of History at Simmons College (1990-1997). From 2000-2005 she was Research Manager at Historic New England (2000-2005). She was awarded two fellowships at Radcliffe (1989-1990; 1997-1999).
Susan’s publications include two co-authored books, Becoming American Jews (Brandeis University Press, 2009) and The Pierce House Historic Property Report (Historic New England, 2005), an edited book, Women of the Commonwealth, Work, Family, and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), and several articles.
Current Projects
Susan Porter continues to work on several manuscripts relating to 19th century American history including a book on the life experiences of children who lived in American orphanages founded before 1820. Her most recent work focuses on class relations, family life, and consumption in the 19th century among Progressive Jews and upwardly mobile Christians.
Representative Publications
Porter, Susan. “A Good Home: Indenture and Adoption in American Orphanages, 1800-1850.” Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives. Edited by E. Wayne Carp. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
Dwyer-Ryan, Meaghan, Susan L. Porter, and Lisa Fagin Davis, Becoming American Jews, Temple Israel of Boston. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2009.