Susan Gaunt Stearns is a historian of the early American West. Her work focuses on bringing the west into the larger story of national and international history.
I am an assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi. My work focuses on integrating the trans-Appalachian west into the broader story of the American founding and the development of American capitalism. My primary research interest is in early American political economy, particularly the role that land and landownership played in the development of American ideas about republicanism and about wealth. I teach courses on colonial America, the American Revolution, frontiers and borderlands, and Mississippi history.
I am deeply interested in pedagogy, particularly in the possibilities that technology offers to the humanities classroom. I have taught seminars on course design, online teaching, teaching with technology, and teaching writing through content.
My book, Empire of Commerce: the Closing of the Mississippi and the Opening of Atlantic Trade (University of Virginia Press, 2024) uses early American debates over control of the Mississippi to explore the connections between American expansion and international trade.
