Good Wives in Early America

Featured Speaker: Professor Mark Hanna

Exploring the lives of ordinary women in early America has always been elusive for historians. This is largely because a “good wife” was someone who did not appear in documents like trial records. For this reason, we sometimes fixate on the unusual and the odd, like the Salem witch hysteria of 1692. This lecture will examine the expectations and prescribed roles of women in the North American colonies during the years before the American Revolution.

Presenter Biography

Mark G. Hanna is Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego. He received his BA from Yale University and his PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740. He is also the Honorary Curator of the Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages in UCSD’s Special Collections Library. He has recently appeared on NPR’s This American Lifeand Netflix’s The Lost Pirate Kingdom.

Coordinator: Candace Gietzen