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 is working on several manuscripts relating to l9th century American history. Gendered Benevolence: Orphan Asylums in Antebellum America, discusses the life experiences of children who lived in American orphanages founded before 1820; three articles-in-progress focus on domestic service, urban boarding houses, and relations between progressive Jews and Christians in Boston.
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.