Marla R. Miller
Associate Professor
Director, Public History Program
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Marla R. Miller
Director, Public History Program
Department of History
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
413-545-4256 (voice); 413-545-6137 (fax)
EDUCATION:
Ph.D. U.S. History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997.
Specializations: U.S. Public History, U.S. Women's History, Social History of Colonial America; American Material Culture
Advisors: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and John K. Nelson, co-advisors
Dissertation:"'My Daily Bread Depends Upon my Labor: Craftswomen, Community and the Marketplace in Rural New
England, 1740-1820."
Awards: Organization of American Historians' Lerner-Scott Prize for the Best Dissertationin Women's History.
Finalist, National Council of Graduate Schools Dissertation Prize.
Finalist, American Historical Association Alan Nevins Dissertation Prize
M.A., U.S. History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991.
B.A., History of Culture, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1988
EMPLOYMENT: Associate Professor, and Director, Public History Program, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, 1999-present
Awards: Chancellor’s Distinguished Academic Service Award, University of Massachusetts, 2003
College of Humanities and Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award, 2006-07
PUBLICATIONS:
BOOKS:
The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution, (University of Massachusetts Press, August 2006).
Award: Millia Davenport Prize, Costume Society of America
Cultivating a Past: Essays on the History of Hadley, Massachusetts (University of Massachusetts Press, Spring 2009)
Betsy Ross: The Life Behind the Legend (in preparation, under contract to Henry Holt)
Selected Recent Articles:
“The Last Mantuamaker: Craft Tradition and Commercial Change in Boston, 1760-1840,” Early American Studies
(November 2006), 372-426.
"Labor and Liberty in the Age of Refinement: Gender, Class and the Built Environment," in Kenneth Breisch
and Alison K. Hoagland, ed., Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2005).
“Playing to Strength: Public History and Higher Education in the United States,” American Studies International
Vol XLII Nos 2 & 3 (June-October 2004), 174-212.
“Gender, Artisanry and Craft Tradition in Early New England: The View Through the Eye of a Needle,”
William and Mary Quarterly (October 2003): 743-776.
“Dressmaking as a Trade for Women: Rediscovering a Lost Art(isanry),” in Cynthia Amneus, ed., A Separate Sphere: Cincinnati Dressmakers, 1880-1920 (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Museum of Art, 2003): 9-15.
Awarded the Ruth Emery Book Prize for 2004 from The Victorian Society of America, presented to an outstanding book on the arts or architecture created of the Victorian period.
SELECTED GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS:
H. F. DuPont Wintertur Research Fellowship, Spring 2007
Ruth Miller Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2004
Public Service Endowment Grant, UMass Office of Industry and Economic Development, 2003-04
Community Service Learning Faculty Fellowship, 2002-03
Faculty Research Grant, Office for Research Affairs, UMass-Amherst, 2001-02
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2001-2002
Faculty Research Grant, Office for Research Affairs, UMass-Amherst, 2000
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer [Research] Stipend, 1998
American Antiquarian Society Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship, 1994.
Five College Women's Studies Research Center Research Associateship, 1994.
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities/Bay State Historical League Scholar-in-Residence Grant, 1994.
Selected Recent Presentations:
“Betsy Ross and the Making of America: Family and Craft Tradition in Early Philadelphia,” H.F. du Pont
Winterthur Museum, October 2008
“Betsy Ross: The Life Behind the Legend,” Historic Philadelphia, Inc., May 2008
“Community History and the Professional Historian,” Fitchberg State College, June 2008 (OAH Distinguished
Lectureship program)
“The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution,” Costume Society of America, New Orleans,
May 2008
“The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Boston,
March 2008
Roundtable on future directions in women’s labor history, Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the
Early American Republic, Worcester, MA, July 2007
“The Needle’s Eye: Women and Quilting in Early New England,” H.F. DuPont Winterthur Museum, May 2007
Comment: “The MVHA, the OAH, and Public History,” (OAH Centennial Session), OAH, Minneapolis, March
2008
“Crafting Comfort: Betsy Ross and the Philadelphia Upholstery Trades,” McNeil Center for Early American
Studies, University of Pennsylvania, February 2007
Comment, “Community and Memory in Historic Site Research and Development:” Emerging Methodologies,”
AHA, Atlanta, GA January 2007
Comment, Material Culture in Early America, Annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American
Republic, Montreal, Canada, July 2006
“Exchange of Views: Doing American History at Historic Sites” AHA Philadelphia PA January 2006
“The Last Mantuamaker: Craft Tradition and Commercial Change in Boston, 1760-1840,” part of the Spring lecture series "Fruits of Their Honest Labour": Men, Women, and Work in Early Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” Old South Meeting House & Historic New England, Boston, MA March, 2005
Selected Professional Service:
Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship participant, 2004-09
Program Committee, National Council on Public History annual meeting, 2008-09
Program Co-chair, National Council on Public History annual meeting program, 2006-2008
Member of the national board of the National Council on Public History, 2006-09
Member of the editorial board of The Public Historian, 2001-2004
Member of the Standing Program Committee, Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 2000-present
American Historical Society Herbert Feis Award Committee, 2006
Chair, Coordinating Council for Women in History Committee on Public History, 2000-2004
Member of the Program Committee, 2004 Organization of American Historians Meeting, Boston
Member of the Program Committee, 2004 NCPH/ASEH meeting, Victoria, British Columbia
