About the Speaker
Carolyn Eastman, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the VCU Department of History. She is an historian of early America with special interest in eighteenth and nineteenth-century histories of political culture, the media and gender. Her research often begins with questions about the uses and meanings of early American media—print, oral and visual cultures—focusing especially on non-elite readers, listeners and viewers.
Eastman has written about Americans’ fascination with Indian eloquence after the Revolution; schoolgirls’ vindications of female oratorical excellence; debates over the best means of advocating for world peace during the antebellum era; portrayals of masculinity and sexuality in popular texts about antebellum pirates; and anxious accounts of mixed-race families in Atlantic travelogues.
She is the author of the award-winning book "Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public After the Revolution."