Sarah Knott (historian)

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Sarah Knott
Born1972 (age 5253)
Occupation(s)Historian and academic
TitleHillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women's History
Academic background
Education Colchester Royal Grammar School
Alma mater Magdalen College, Oxford
University of Pennsylvania
St Hugh's College, Oxford
Thesis A cultural history of sensibility in the era of the American Revolution (1999)
Institutions Indiana University Bloomington
St John's College, Oxford
Notable worksMother: An Unconventional History (2019)

Sarah C. Knott FRHistS (born 1972) is an English historian of women, gender and maternity, and of America and the Atlantic world since the seventeenth century. [1] She is the Hillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women's History at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of St John's College. [2]

Contents

Academic career

Knott was educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School before completing her undergraduate studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating in 1993. [3] She moved to the University of Pennsylvania to earn her MA on a Thouron Scholarship, but returned to Oxford for her DPhil. [2] Her doctoral work explored the concept of sensibility during the American Revolution and was completed in 1999 at St Hugh's College. [4]

After earning her doctorate Knott worked as a research fellow on the Leverhulme Trust-funded project "Feminism and Enlightenment 1650-1850: A Comparative History" which was directed by Barbara Taylor and sponsored by both the University of East London and Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2005 Taylor and Knott published an edited collection based on their research, Women, Gender and Enlightenment, with Palgrave Macmillan. [5]

Funding for the project ended in 2001, at which point Knott joined the faculty of Indiana University Bloomington as Assistant Professor of History. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and became the Sally M. Reahard Professor of History in 2020. During her time at the university she was a fellow of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction and a visiting senior research fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. [6] She also held a Mellon postdoctoral research fellowship at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. [7]

Knott's first monograph, based on her doctoral research, was published in 2009 by the University of North Carolina Press. In 2019 she published Mother: An Unconventional History with Sarah Crichton Books. 2020 saw the publication of a supplement of the journal Past & Present titled Mothering's Many Labours, edited by Knott and Emma Griffin.

Knott has previously served as both associate and acting editor of the American Historical Review and has sat on the editorial board of Past & Present since 2013. [7]

In August 2024 Knott returned to the University of Oxford as the second Hillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women's History at St John's College, succeeding the inaugural holder of the chair, Brenda Elaine Stevenson. [8]

Media work

Knott has reviewed books on the history of motherhood for The Guardian , [9] The Times Literary Supplement [10] and BBC History Magazine . [11] She has also discussed conceptions of motherhood in the past on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour . [12]

Bibliography

Books

Book chapters

Journal articles

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. "List of Fellows as of December 2024" (PDF). Royal Historical Society. Retrieved 2 January 2025.
  2. 1 2 "Professor Sarah Knott". Faculty of History, University of Oxford. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  3. "Ewen Green Lecture by Sarah Knott (1990)". Magdalen College, Oxford. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  4. "Graduate Scholarships". St Hugh's College Chronicle. 71: 16. 1998.
  5. Barbara Taylor; Sarah Knott, eds. (2005). Women, Gender and Enlightenment. Palgrave Macmillan. p. ix.
  6. "Sarah C. Knott". IU Alliance of Distinguished and Titled Professors. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  7. 1 2 "Sarah Knott". Indiana University Faculty. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  8. "Professor Sarah Knott appointed to the Hillary Rodham Clinton Professorship of Women's History". University of Oxford. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  9. Knott, Sarah. "Midwives, memoir and murder: the best books about motherhood". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  10. Knott, Sarah. "Either carrying or nursing: How the Victorians talked about pregnancy and birth". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 31 December 2024.
  11. Knott, Sarah (18 April 2019). "The Motherhood Revolution". BBC History Magazine: 60.
  12. "Woman's Hour: Remembering the Magdalene Laundries". BBC. Retrieved 31 December 2024.