Caregiving and Crisis in the American Revolutionary War
My dissertation explores the lives, networks, and practices of caregivers during the American Revolutionary War, predominantly in Philadelphia and wider Pennsylvania. The project centers the precariously employed, indentured, and enslaved caregivers whose labor underpinned early American care networks, and examines the role of 'crisis' and coercion in the Continental Army's demands for civilians' caregiving labor and household resources during the war. My research incorporates material as well as textual sources, such as household objects used for everyday care (e.g. nursing, washing, cleaning, and cooking), to make more tangible the experiences of caregivers who are largely absent from the archival record.