Elizabeth A Fenn
| Title: | Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies |
| Office Location: | 301 Carr |
| Office Phone: | (919) 684-2192 |
| Email Address: | efenn@duke.edu |
- Office Hours:
- Spring 2009: Weds., 11:00-1:00
Education
- PhD Yale University, 1999
- MA Yale University, 1985
- BA Duke University, 1981
Research Interests
Elizabeth Fenn received her undergraduate degree at Duke in 1981 and returned here to teach in 2002. Her field of study is early North America, focusing particularly on epidemic disease, Native American history, and social history. Her aim is to develop a continent-wide analysis that incorporates Native Americans as well as African, British, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Russian colonizers into a narrative that reflects the demographic and geographic realities of the early contact era. Fenn’s 2001 book Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (Hill and Wang), unearthed the devastating effects of a terrible smallpox epidemic that coursed across the North American continent during the years of the American Revolution. Her current book project, Encounters at the Heart of the World: The Rise and Fall of the Mandan People, 1738-1838 (Hill and Wang, forthcoming), will examine the experience of North Dakota's Mandan Indians in the first century after European contact.
Awards, Honors, and Distinctions
- ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellow, 2005
- John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow, 2005-2006
- Society of the Cincinnati Book Prize, (triennial award for the best book on the Revolutionary era), 2004
- Longman-History Today Book of the Year, (joint winner), awarded by the British history magazine History Today and education publisher Longman, 2003
- James J. Broussard First Book Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, 2002
- Annual Publication Award, Society of Colonial Wars in the District of Columbia, 2001
- Binkley-Stephenson Award, (best Journal of American History article), Organization of American Historians, 2001
- Frederick W. Beinecke Dissertation Prize, Yale University, 1999
- Louis Pelzer Memorial Award, (best grad student essay), Organization of American Historians, 1999
- University Fellow, Yale University, 1984–1985
- James Harvey Robinson Prize, corecipient, American Historical Association, 1984
- William T. Laprade Prize in History, (best honors essay), Duke University, 1981
- HISTORY 111B.01, ERA OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Synopsis
- White 107, MW 02:50 PM-04:05 PM
- HISTORY 302.01, RESEARCH SEMINAR IN HST
Recent Publications
Book Chapters- Elizabeth A. Fenn, ""A Revolutionary Contagion: Smallpox and the Reshaping of the American West, 1779–82"" in Pekka Hämäläinen ed., When Disease Makes History: Epidemics and Great Historical Turning Points (Helsinki University Press, 2006), 45-80.
- Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Diseases" in Gregory Fremont-Barnes and Richard A. Ryerson ed., The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War (ABC-CLIO, 2006), 360-362.
- Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Smallpox" in Gregory Fremont-Barnes and Richard A. Ryerson ed., The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War (ABC-CLIO, 2006), 1160-1164.
- Elizabeth A. Fenn, ""Contemplating Contagion," review of Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715". Comon-Place 8,:4 (July 2008). [fenn.shtml]
- Elizabeth A. Fenn, Review of Jennifer Lee Carrell, "The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox". Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78 (Summer, 2004): 481-83.