Profile
Susan Pearson is an historian of the United States and a specialist in statebuilding.
Publications
The Birth Certificate: An American History (University of North Carolina Press, 2021)
“`Facts Which Might Be Embarrassing’: Illegitimacy, Vital Registration, and State Knowledge,” in Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern US History, edited by Margot Canaday, Nancy Cott, and Robert Self (University of Chicago Press, 2021)
The Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
“A New Birth of Regulation: The State of the State after the Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5 (2015): 422-439
“`Age Ought to Be a Fact’: The Campaign against Child Labor and the Rise of the Birth Certificate,” Journal of American History 101 (2015): 1144-1165.
