Award-Winning Books
My scholarship in early America focuses on how the different voices within underrepresented religious communities challenge the way we understand religious change. While my dissertation and first book focused on Native American Christianity in colonial New England, both my second and current book project are on early American Judaism, particularly the messianic and mystical traditions of the Caribbean. See my CV for complete publications (pdf).
Once We Were Slaves:
The Extraordinary Journey of a Multi-Racial Jewish Family
An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother’s maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses’s ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress’s assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives poor, Christian, and enslaved in Barbados. Available August 2021 from Oxford University Press. Preorder now!
