Curriculum Vitae

Elizabeth A Fenn

Duke University
Department of History
Box 90719
Durham, NC 27708-0719 		(919) 684-2192 (office)
(email)
Education

PhDYale University1999
MAYale University1985
BADuke University1981
Areas of Interest

Epidemic disease
Early North America
Native American

Awards, Honors, and Distinctions

Thomas Langford Lectureship Award, Duke University, 2008 - 2009
Bass Chair/Bass Society of Fellows, Duke University, 2009
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
Professional Service

Departmental Officer
Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of History, 2008 - 2010  
Departmental Committee
Department Executive Committee, 2008 - 2010  
Undergraduate Curriculum Comittee, 2007 - 2010  
University Committee
John Richards Global History Lectureship Committee, 2010  
SISS Faculty Focus Group, 2010  
Office of Institutional Equity Harassment Grievance Board, 2008 - 2010  
Service to the Profession
Manuscript review for The Massachusetts Historical Review, 2011  
Manuscript review for The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2010  
Service to the Community
Teacher training session on smallpox for the Edmonds, Washington, School District, February 25, 2011  
Selected Recent Invited Talks

"Mandan History as American History", keynote address to the 68th Annual Plains Anthropological Conference, Bismarck, North Dakota, October 08, 2010  
"The Mandans: An Environmental History", Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., September 08, 2010  
“Ecological Encounters on the Upper Missouri: The Making of Mandan Indian History,” Thomas Langford Award Lecture, Duke University,, March 17, 2009  
“A Revolutionary Pestilence: The Great Smallpox Contagion of 1775–1782, Ecology of Disease Lecture Series, Biological Sciences Department, Smith College, Northampton, Mass., March 09, 2009  
Pox Americana, Bullitt History of Medicine Club, Duke/UNC Collaborative Speaker Series, Chapel Hill, N.C., October 21, 2008.  
A Revolutionary Contagion: The Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, Keynote Address, "Turning Points/Tipping Points," Seventh Annual Idaho Council for History Education Conference, Boise, Id., October 04, 2007  
Computer Research Methods Presentation, Graduate Seminar on the History of the West, Yale University, New Haven, Ct., January 24, 2007  
Encounter at the Heart of the World, Presentation to Western History Lunch Group, Yale University, January 24, 2007, New Haven, Ct., January 24, 2007  
Computer Research Methods Presentation, Graduate Seminar on the History of the West, Yale University, January 20, 2005  
The Rise and Fall of the Mandan Nation, Presentation to Western History Lunch Group, Yale University, January 20, 2005  
A Revolutionary Contagion: Smallpox and the Reshaping of North America, 1775-82, When Disease Makes History, Conference at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, October 15, 2004  
Smallpox and American Independence, Society of the Cincinnati, Anderson House, Washington, D.C., September 18, 2004  
The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C., September 16, 2004  
American Legacy Exposition History Symposium, Fort Abraham Lincoln, Mandan, N.D., July 30, 2004  
Keynote Address, First Annual North Carolina Epi Teams Conference, "Epidemiology at Work," Chapel Hill, N.C., June 15, 2004  
George Washington Symposium 2004, The Lyceum, Alexandria, Virginia, February 7, 2004  
Grand Rounds, Infectious Diseases Division, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., February 2, 2004  
A Continental Contagion: The Great North American Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82, Thursday Series Seminar of Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and University Program in Cell and Molecular Biology, Duke University, 6 December 2003  
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82, North Carolina Literary and Historical Association and the Federation of North Carolina Historical Societies, Annual Meeting, 14 November 2003  
Grand Rounds, 25th Anniversary of the School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 19 September 2003  
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82, 2003–2004 Science Faculty Seminar Series, Durham Technical Community College, 27 August 2003  
Did He or Didn’t He? Jeffery Amherst, Smallpox, and 18th-Century Germ Warfare, Eighth Annual War College of the Seven Years’ War, Fort Ticonderoga, N.Y., 17 May 2003  
Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, Humanities in Medicine Lecture Series, Duke Center for the Study of Medical Ethics & Humanities, Durham, N.C., 26 March 2003  
Smallpox, Past and Present: An Old Virus in a New World, 2003 Humanities Symposium (on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World), Loyola College, Baltimore, Md., 26 February 2003  
Revolutionary Contagion: Smallpox and the Reshaping of North America, 1775–1782, Weight of War Lecture Series, Duke University, Durham, N.C., 29 January 2003  
Grand Rounds, Department of Dermatology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, N.C., 11 December 2002  
The Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82, UNC School of Public Health, Chapel Hill, N.C., 14 November 2002  
Virus of Empire: How Smallpox Reshaped Revolutionary America, Ramazzini Colloquium Lecture. St. Augustine's College, Raleigh, N.C., 14 November 2002  
High Country Nexus: Smallpox, History, and the Eighteenth-Century West, Keynote address, Third Annual Conference on Medical History of the American West, Bozeman, Montana, 29 October 2002  
Pox Americana, Washington College, Starr Center, Chestertown, Md., 6 February 2002  
Pox Americana, History of Medicine Seminar, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., 19 December 2001  
Annual Stafford Lecture, Department of History, University of Richmond, Richmond, Va., 22 October 2001  
Pox Americana: The Great North American Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-1782, Columbia University Seminar on Early American History and Culture, New York, N.Y., 30 November 2000  
Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst, Faculty and Graduate Student Seminar at the University of South Florida Department of History, Tampa, Fla., 30 October 1999  
Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst, Michigan Colonial Studies Seminar and Michigan History of Medicine & Health Colloquium, Ann Arbor, Mich, 30 March 1999  
Jonkonnu in North Carolina, Smithsonian Institution, Caribbean Festival Arts Exhibition, Washington, D.C., 15 September 1989  
‘A Perfect Equality Seemed to Reign’: Slave Society and Jonkonnu, Historical Society of North Carolina, Annual Meeting, October, 1986  
African Decorative Traditions in Black Graveyards of the U.S., Harvard University, Dept. of History, Cambridge, Mass., Spring, 1984  
Computer Research Methods Presentation, Graduate Seminar on the History of the West, Yale University,, January 2007, 2007  
Doctoral Theses Directed

C. Thomas Long (GWU), Green Water Revolution: The War for American Independence on the Waters of the Southern Chesapeake Theater, (2002 - 2005)  
David Porter (GWU), James Wilkinson and Kentucky Separatism, (2001-2007)  

Publications

Books

  1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 (2001), New York: Hill and Wang
  2. Fenn, Elizabeth A., and Peter H. Wood, Natives and Newcomers: The Way We Lived in North Carolina before 1770 (1983), Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Edited Volumes

  1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Population Collapse in Early North Dakota: The Mandans, 1500-1838", in Contested Spaces in the Americas, edited by Edward Countryman (forthcoming), Clements Center for Southwestern Studies in cooperation with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies

Journal Articles

  1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Whither the Rest of the Continent?, Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 24, no. 2 (Summer, 2004), pp. 167-75
  2. Elizabeth A. Fenn, The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82, History Today, vol. 53 (August, 2003), pp. 10–17

Papers Published

  1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox and Human Progess, New York Times, vol. 4 no. 13 (November, 2001) (Op-ed.)
  2. Fenn, Elizabeth A, Biological Warfare in Eighteenth- Century North America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst, Journal of American History, vol. 86 (March, 2000), pp. 1552-1580
  3. Fenn, Elizabeth A, Biological Warfare, Circa 1750, New York Times, vol. A25 (April, 1998)
  4. Fenn, Elizabeth A, A Mechanic's Confessions: Why We Do What We Do to You and Your Car, Independent Weekly, vol. 9 (July, 1991), pp. 8-10
  5. Fenn, Elizabeth A, 'A Perfect Equality Seemed to Reign': Slave Society and Jonkonnu, The North Carolina Historical Review, vol. 65 (April, 1988), pp. 127-53
  6. Fenn, Elizabeth A, 'All Dance, Leap and Play': Jonkonnu, Slave Society, and Black Dance, in The Black Tradition in Modern Dance (1988), pp. 9-11 (The American Dance Festival.)
  7. Fenn, Elizabeth A, Honoring the Ancestors: Kongo-American Graves in the American South, Southern Exposure, vol. 13 (September, 1985), pp. 42-47 (Reprinted in the Newport News Daily Press, February 9, 1986.)
  8. Fenn, Elizabeth A, 'So Simple Yet So Complicated': Folk Artist William Young of Pantego, North Carolina Folklore Journal, vol. 32 (Fall, 1984), pp. 56-69

Book Chapters

  1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "A Revolutionary Contagion: Smallpox and the Reshaping of the American West, 1779–82", in When Disease Makes History: Epidemics and Great Historical Turning Points, edited by Pekka Hämäläinen (2006), pp. 45-80, Helsinki University Press
  2. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Diseases", in The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War, edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and Richard A. Ryerson, vol. 1 (2006), pp. 360-362, ABC-CLIO
  3. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Smallpox", in The Encyclopedia of the American Revolutionary War, edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and Richard A. Ryerson, vol. 4 (2006), pp. 1160-1164, ABC-CLIO
  4. Elizabeth A. Fenn and Peter H. Wood, Natives and Newcomers: North Carolina before 1770, in The Way We Lived in North Carolina, edited by Joe A. Mobley, 1–104 (2003), pp. 1–104, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Book Reviews

  1. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Review of Pox: An American History, by Michael Willrich, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 85 (Forthcoming, Winter 2011)
  2. Elizabeth A. Fenn, "Contemplating Contagion," review of Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715, Common-Place, vol. 8, no. 4 (July 2008)
  3. Elizabeth A. Fenn, Review of Jennifer Lee Carrell, The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 78 (Summer, 2004), pp. 481-83
  4. Fenn, Elizabeth A. Review of Kenny Dalsheimer, Go Fast, Turn Left: Voices from Orange County Speedway, Southern Cultures, vol. 5 (Spring, 1999), pp. 100-102
Last modified: 2011/12/24