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Gretchen A. Adams

Contact Information:

Email: gretchen.adams@ttu.edu
Office: 55 Holden Hall

Fields:

U.S. Political and Cultural History to 1877, History and Memory

About Dr. Adams:

Dr. Adams’ primary teaching and research interests are in both the real and perceived legacy of British colonial rule over what later became the United States.  This lingering cultural memory of colonial rule pervades print and oratory from the Revolution forward to present day.  Adams’ central interest is the political context of these symbolic representations of events and individuals in the colonial historical record and how they are used. In different moments they are recalled, recast, and re-imagined to persuade, unite and exclude Americans from the mainstream of American life.  At TTU since 2002, she teaches courses on the early national period of U.S. History, topics in History and Memory, and Historical Methods and Historiography. Professor Adams was tenured and promoted in 2008. She has published numerous articles and encyclopedia essays related to her research. Her most recent major publications are:

In 2009, Dr. Adams completed six years work as an associate editor on an international team of scholars who produced the first complete, annotated collection of the 1692 Salem Witchcraft Trials legal records:

She is currently completing research on a monograph concerned with the concept of “treason” in the Anglo-American imagination from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries and two chapters for forthcoming edited volumes on American “history and memory.”

Professor Adams has received grant and resident fellowship funding for her research from institutions that include Brown University, the American Historical Association, the Boston Athenaeum, the American Antiquarian Society, the University of Glasgow, Smith College, and the Virginia Historical Society.  At TTU she was awarded an “Alumni Association New Faculty Award” in 2004, a Humanities Initiative Grant in 2006, and a Gloria Lyerla Library Travel Grant in 2008.

As Senior Editor of the William F. Cody Papers since 2008, along with Dr. Douglas Seefeldt at the University of Nebraska, she continues her interest in scholarly editing. Dr. Adams directs the compilation and preparation of the personal and professional documents of the nineteenth-century showman and entrepreneur by eight Associate Editors located at U.S. and European universities. In 2010 the project will produce two volumes with the University of Nebraska Press, and launch a major portion of its digital archive.

Professor Adams has presented papers related to her research at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, the Newberry Library, and a variety of other professional meetings and seminars in the United States and Europe. Her book reviews have appeared in journals that include: The Canadian Historical Review, The New England Quarterly, H-Net, “Commonplace,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History  and the Southwest Historical Quarterly. Dr. Adams is also active in departmental and university service and in a number of professional organizations. She currently serves on the national conference committee for the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, has recently been a grant reviewer for the U.S. Dept. of Education, and is organizing a conference in Scotland for the summer of 2010.