Department of History

"I am interested in how we create and teach the past through the purposeful selection of certain histories over others. As a teacher and an educator of teachers, I am dedicated to crafting a more inclusive and diverse history curriculum, both at the college and high school level."

Dr. Allison Fredette earned her B.A. and an M.A. in History from West Virginia University and completed her Ph.D. in American History at the University of Florida. Dr. Fredette's areas of study include the nineteenth-century American South, as well as the history of marriage, gender, and the family. Her first book, Marriage on the Border: Love, Mutuality, and Divorce in the Upper South during the Civil War, explores the connections between regional identity and the construction of marriage and marital roles in the Border South states of Kentucky and West Virginia, from the late antebellum period through the early years of Reconstruction. 

Her newest project, "Murdering Laura Foster: Violence, Gender, and Memory in Appalachian North Carolina," revisits the infamous 1866 Wilkesboro murder case that inspired the ballad, "Tom Dooley." She will put Laura Foster, the victim, back at the center of the story by using gender analysis to study the murder, trial, and folk song. 

Education

Ph.D. University of Florida

Areas of Study

History Education, United States History, Women/Gender History

Selected Courses

HIS 3423: Women in American History 

HIS 3424: History of Women and the Law

HIS 3634: Teaching Controversy in History

Selected Publications

Marriage on the Border: Love, Mutuality, and Divorce During the Civil War Era. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2020. 

"'One Pillar of the Social Fabric May Still Stand Firm': Bluegrass Marriage in the Emancipation Era" in Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom, eds. William A. Link and James Broomall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 93-118.

"The View from the Border: West Virginia Republicans and Women's Rights in the Age of Emancipation," West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies 3:1 (Spring 2009), 57-80.

More information: allisondfredette.com