Faculty biography - Linda Sturtz
Linda L. Sturtz is Corlis Professor of History at Beloit College where she teaches a research seminar on the History of the Atlantic World in the Early Modern Period, Early American History, US History from Confederation to Confederacy, and Women's and Gender History, and has taught courses on Gender, Whiteness and Empire. She has also team taught an interdisciplinary course with Professor Lichtenstein on “The Education of American Girls, Pre-1880.”
Her first book, "Within Her Power: Propertied Women in Colonial Virginia" (2002), discusses women's economic activities in both local and trans-Atlantic settings while considering the legal actions propertied women took to protect the interests of themselves and their families. She is researching a book on Gender and Whiteness in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica, which has led her to explore women’s letters, account books and law suits. She also investigates the way they were depicted in contemporary prints, music and fiction. She is currently completing an article on popular culture and musical performances of African-Caribbean women in pre-emancipation Jamaica. Her ongoing research on the history of race and gender in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jamaica takes her to libraries and manuscript collections in England, Scotland, across the United States and the West Indies. She looks forward to sharing her passion for the kind of “time travel” one does in a library with students who participate in the Fall 2011 seminar.
At the Chicago Field Museum's "Real Pirates" exhibit in 2009.
A graduate of Carleton College, Professor Sturtz participated in the ACM Newberry Library Program as a student. She was impressed at the Library's holdings then, and remains impressed at their potential for sustaining original work now. She earned her M.A. in History with a Certificate in Museum Management from the College of William and Mary and her Ph.D. from Washington University. She divides her time between Beloit, Wisconsin and Kingston, Jamaica, and is looking forward to enjoying musical life in Chicago during her semester at the Newberry.