The College of

Arts and Sciences

Fields

Native American and Indigenous, Early America, 19th Century U.S., Women, Gender and Sexuality, Environmental

 

Bio

Professor Kosc's research centers on the experiences of Indigenous women within their tribal nations and the expanding settler state in the first decades of American nationhood. Her first book project, “The Education of Mary Peters: Stockbridge Mohican Women and Community Survivance in Early America,” tells the story of three generations of Mohican women as they directed educational opportunities for their children from the 1790s to the 1850s. They orchestrated these efforts to sustain their community in the wake of repeated removals from their homelands in Massachusetts into New York, Indiana and Wisconsin. While historical narratives of the Stockbridge-Munsee nation appear in several academic articles and books, a window into the lives of the nation’s women has yet to be considered. The recovery of their story offers a unique perspective through which to view the history of Indian education and the dynamic interplay between education, race, gender and citizenship in nineteenth-century America.

 

Her most recent work entitled, “Caring for Our Affairs Ourselves: Stockbridge Mohican Women and Indian Education in Early America,” was published in the "American Indian Quarterly" in fall 2020. The article looks at the ways Mohican women shaped colonial education projects, specifically women’s textile manufacturing, to suit their own needs and support community survivance. It also examines how American missionaries took credit for Mohican women’s success and twisted their female educational priorities from ones that privileged Mohican sovereignty to a state-sponsored female-first strategy aimed at cultural and racial destruction in the later half of the nineteenth century. Various parts of Dr. Kosc's research have been presented at the annual meetings of the Organization of American Historians, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders, and Sexualities.
 
Courses taught

HIST 1483: U.S. History to 1865

HIST 2023: History of the Present
HIST 3633: Early National Period, 1787-1828

HIST 3793: Native American History

HIST 3903: Introduction to the Study of History

HIST 5120: Colonial and Revolutionary America Readings Seminar

HIST 5120: 19th Century U.S. Graduate Readings Seminar

Honors Add-On: "Who Tells Your Story?": Hamilton and the Popular Memory of America's Founding