Sandra Slater
Professor
Slater received her Ph.D. from University of Kentucky. Her dissertation is entitled "The Making of Men: Comparative Constructions of Military Masculinities in the New World." Professor Slater is currently working on a book project exploring the historic rituals, beliefs, and practices surrounding death and dying in central Appalachia. She is also working on two articles: one on adultery and masculinity in early New England and the other a same-sex Civil War love story.
Affiliate Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies
Affiliate Faculty, African American Studies Director of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program,
Board of Directors for Consortium of the Revolutionary Era,
Co-Chair, Native American Task Force
Education
Ph.D. in History University of Kentucky, 2009
Graduate Certificate in Gender and Women’s History, 2006
B.A. in History and American Studies, minor in English and music, 2003
Research Interests
Women/Gender/Sexuality
Early Modern Atlantic World
British Colonial America
Race in America
Appalachian Studies
Courses Taught
HIST 210 History of Appalachia
HIST 221 Women in America, 1600-present
HIST 228 History of American Sexualities
HIST 229 History of Queer America
HIST 301 Colonial America
HIST 302 History of the American Revolution
Publications
- “’Horns as Big as a Bull’: Mary Latham, Adultery, and Emasculation in Puritan New England.” (in progress)
- “’How I Love My Private’: A Civil War Love Story” (in progress)
- The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2025.
- “The Mountains We Climb: Perspectives on Teaching Queer History from a Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Why We Teach LGBTQ+ History in High Schools: Practical Strategies and Voices of Experience. Ed., Stacie Brensilver Berman. New York: Routledge, 2025.
- “Queering the Atlantic World.” Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History. Open Educational Resource. Online.
- “The Erotics of Early America.” Cambridge Companion of Early American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 179-201. 2022 "Outstanding Academic Title" Award by the American Library Association
- “‘Glory in the Memory of Men’: Masculinities in the Mohawk Wars, 1609-1610.” French Colonial History. Vol. 8 (2019): 1-28.
- “‘Two Suns in One Firmament’: John Cotton, Thomas Hooker and the 1655 New Haven Sodomy Statute.” Church History. (Vol. 87, Issue 4, December 2018).
- “Fur Traders, Voyageurs, and Coureurs des Bois: Economic Masculinities in French Canadian Fur Trade Society, 1635-1754.” Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture. 1.1 (Premiere Issue). 2014, 92-120.
- “Great Pride and Insolence”: Spiritual Justifications for Violence in the Pequot War.” Journal of Early American History. 4.1 (2014), 37-65.
- “Sex, Sin, and Sodomy: The Historiography of Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Colonial Massachusetts.” Historical Journal of Massachusetts. Vol. 41, No. 1 (Winter 2013), 67-97.
- “Emasculation and Manliness in North America, 1450-1640.” Gender and Sexuality in Native North American Societies, 1400, 1840. Sandra Slater and Fay Yarbrough, Eds. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.
- Gender and Sexuality in Native North American Societies, 1400, 1840. Sandra Slater and Fay Yarbrough, Eds. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2011.
Conference Presentations, Public Lectures, Book Talks
Book Talks (Invited)
“Uniformity and Individuality in Early America: A Conversation with Professors John McCurdy and Sandra Slater”
University of Paris (March 2025)
The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England
Oxford University, Rothermere American Institute (March 2025)
The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England
Unitarian Universalist Church of ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø (March 2025)
The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England
Sabbatical Talk, 2025 (February 2025)
The Pompe and Pride of Man: Pride and Humility in Early New England
Phi Alpha Theta (Carolinas) Keynote Speaker, Coastal Carolina University (April 2025)
Public Lectures (Invited)
“Queering the Atlantic World.”
American Social History Project, NEH Funded Workshop, Summer 2024
City University of New York Graduate Center
“Lowcountry Masculinities in the Early Republic.”
Telfair Art Museum Savannah, Georgia (September 2023)
“‘Horns as Big as a Bull’: Mary Latham, Adultery, and Emasculation in Puritan New England.”
Wofford College, 2023
“Queer Identities in Early America,”
American Social History Project, NEH Funded Workshop, Summer 2022
City University of New York Graduate Center
“Sex and Sodomy in Early New England”
2015 Valerie Hoffman Lecture Series at Union College (Schenectady, NY)
Conference Papers and Panels (recent)
“Perspectives from the Museum: Presenting Difficult Histories in Challenging Times”
(Roundtable Chair)
2025 Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/ CLAW Conference
“Queer History South” Conference (attended)
2024 Invisible Histories Conference (Charlotte, NC)
“Sex, Sin, and Sanctification: Queer Sexualities in Early New England.”
2023 Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg,
Virginia)
“‘Horns as Big as a Bull’: Mary Latham, Adultery, and Emasculation in Puritan New England.”
2023 Society of Early Americanists, (Baltimore, MD)
“How I love my Private”: A Civil War Same-Sex Love Story.”
2021 Organization of American Historians (Chicago, Illinois)
(cancelled, COVID)
Abuses of Power in the American Revolution
2020 Consortium of the Revolutionary Era (Tallahassee, FL).
Chair and Comments.
“‘Horns as Big as a Bull’: Mary Latham, Adultery, and Emasculation in Puritan New
England.”
2019 Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, (Pittsburg, PA).
Conflict: Military, Civilian, and Race
2019 Consortium of the Revolutionary Era (Atlanta, GA)
Panel Comments.
Gendered Politics, Heroic Death, and Public Lives: Transnational Women
2018 Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (Philadelphia, PA)
Chair
“Creating Institutional Space for Critical Pedagogy across Disciplines”
2018 Freire50: Conference on Critical Pedagogy and Paulo Freire (Columbia, SC)
Graduate Student Papers Panel
2017 Consortium on the Revolutionary Era (ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, SC)
Comments
Transforming Public History from ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø to the Atlantic World Conference (2017)
Multiple Panel Chairs and Comments
“‘Glory in the Memory of Men’: Masculinities in the Mohawk Wars”
2017 Society of Early Americanists (Tulsa, OK)
“A Heretical and Seditious Sermon: John Wheelwright and Ministerial Masculinity in
Massachusetts Bay”
2015 Ohio Valley History Conference (Richmond, Kentucky)
“‘Take Courage’: Samuel de Champlain and Native Women in the Great Lakes Region”
2014 Southern History Association Annual Conference (Atlanta, GA)
Conferences Organized
Revolutions from Below (May 2026)—200 anticipated attendees
Organized with the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, Oxford University,
University of Paris, University of South Carolina
Currents and Exchanges in Vast Early America (June 2025)—200 anticipated attendees
Organized with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Legacies of Social Justice: Exploring Ancestries, Interrogating Enslavement (July 2023)—50
attendees
Organized with Georgia State University, Avery Research Center
Archives in the Atlantic World (May 2023)—100 attendees
Organized with Addlestone Libraries, Avery Research Center, South Carolina Historical Society
St George Tucker Society Annual Conference (July 2023)—40 attendees
The Stono Rebellion and the Atlantic World (July 2022)—150 attendees
Organized with the Slave Dwelling Project and Stono Legacy Project
French and African Diasporas in the Atlantic World (May 2022)—200 attendees
Organized with French Colonial Historical Society and the Huguenot Society of SC
2020 Port Cities in the Atlantic World (cancelled due to COVID)—150 attendees
Race, Gender and Sex in the Atlantic Conference (2012)—100 attendees
Committee, The Vesey Conspiracy at 200: Black Anti-Slavery in the Atlantic World (2018)
Committee, Transforming Public History: From ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø to the Atlantic World (2017)
Committee, Southern Association of Women Historians (2015)
Committee, Crisis & Conflict in the Early Carolinas Conference (2010)