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The Childhood, Law & Policy Network (CLPN)

Professor Susan Pearson

Susan

Professor of History, Northwestern University, United States

Email: sjp@northwestern.edu

Profile

Susan Pearson is an historian of the United States and a specialist in statebuilding.

Research

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.

Expertise

Birth registration, birth certificates, state building, animal and child protection organizations
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