Karin Wulf
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kawulf.bsky.social
Karin Wulf
@kawulf.bsky.social

Historian of #VastEarlyAmerica, gender, family & politics | Director & Librarian @ JCBLibrary | History Prof @ Brown U

#LineageTheBook OUP July, 2025 | On some other platforms and also @ karinwulf.com | Opinions here just mine. .. more

Karin A. Wulf is an American historian and the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island. She was the executive director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia from 2013 through 2021. She is also one of the founders of Women Also Know History, a searchable website database of women historians. Additionally, Wulf worked to spearhead a neurodiversity working group at William & Mary in 2011. She is currently writing a book about genealogy and political culture in Early America titled, Lineage: Genealogy and the Politics of Connection in British America, 1680-1820. Her work examines the history of women, gender, and the family in Early America. .. more

Political science 42%
Sociology 16%
Pinned
It’s been a long time coming… so thrilled to share the cover (and Oxford UP website last in 🧵) for my book, _Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America_, pub date 7.2.25 (but will ship, so they say very enticingly, mid-June. 1/ #VastEarlyAmerica 🗃️

upskirting vibe indeed.
I mean, in what sense will you be able to say the college “survived”?

Now 56, "Brigitte Combs was 11 years old and living in Los Angeles when her mother found a prospective husband for her... in 2018 she read that Delaware had become the first state in America to ban all child marriage —and she broke down and wept." #FamilyIsPolitical www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/o...
Opinion | Why Do We Allow Child Marriage in America?
www.nytimes.com
I don’t write the headlines but I do like this one (post-Slaughter argument roundtable for @nytimes.com with @stevevladeck.bsky.social & @williambaude.bsky.social)

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/o...
Opinion | Looks Like the Supreme Court Will Continue to Overturn the 20th Century
www.nytimes.com
New Episode! "Recovering Black Mariners in the Atlantic World with Mary Hicks"

Check out my conversation with Dr. Hicks about the stories she tells in Captive Cosmopolitans Black Mariners and the World of South Atlantic Slavery @uncpress.bsky.social

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/r...

There is no history that won't be instructive. This morning for a project I'm reading family histories from the US interment of Japanese Americans during WW2. You think you're ready for the depravity of this, but you're not.

Like the fall of Rome and the war of 1812 in one scented metaphor.

🤔The War of 1812 candle with the destruction of the White House still in stock at NYHS.
Added more resources to the Anti-GenAI bibliography! If you have links you think I may have missed while I was in Ireland (November 23 to today), please do drop them! I'll be so glad to add them (and self-promotion is welcome). catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...
Against Generative AI – Cate Denial
catherinedenial.org

It’s a v complex background there stuffed into a news story about ancestry policy assertion.

“Over 99 percent of all genetic genealogy investigations have used public records from Ancestry.” I've written about how tightly family history in the US from the 18thc forward is connected to law, politics, government. #GenealogyIsPolitical www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/n...
Cold Case Inquiries Stall After Ancestry.com Revisits Policy for Users
www.nytimes.com
Here's a short piece I wrote to explain to smart laypersons what the birthright citizenship clause is for and why it's in the Fourteenth Amendment. Excerpted from my forthcoming book. Ungated:
History Shows Why Birthright Citizenship is so Important
The 14th Amendment aimed to overturn restrictive state laws while making the Constitution more inclusive.
time.com

So tough bc recently both have had such relatively mild treatment!

There is nothing about Henry that is sympathetic but crikey the hellish people around him occasionally make him look slightly less horrid.

The BEST. Both of my kids have asked me for the same and I really wondered if I’d ever felt more needed as a parent. 😄🤓

Reposted by Manisha Sinha

Re-reading a lot more about Henry VIII lately. Murderous narcissist made vastly worse by sycophants and opportunist bureaucrats.

At one point in I would just open the proof to any page and see how many errors I could spot! The page by page is so numbing. But it'll be done soon, and out in the world, and into the hands of appreciative readers.
Let’s say you had the opportunity to assign college students *1* thing (article, video, podcast) to help them understand what edtech is, how it’s funded, who benefits from it, and how it preys on their data. What hits these bases in a comprehensive, up-to-date, and powerful way?

There is also an angle here about manuscripts dealers... 🥸

Fantastic, thank you!

When I say that the bastards are getting me down, what I mean is I submitted a revised essay abt the family histories that single moms spoke into the late 18thc court record on behalf of their babies. And how those histories are occluded not by shaming rituals but records practices then and since.

Indeed.

For anyone reading with even a little background, this article tells us a bit more about what's happening at the National Archives: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/a...
At the National Archives, a Deep Dive Into the American Story
www.nytimes.com
America stares down erasure of Black history and progress www.axios.com/2025/11/29/f... "The cuts and deletions are, paradoxically, drawing more attention to Black history [and the need for it to understand and respond to this moment], says National Urban League president Marc H. Morial."
America stares down erasure of Black history and progress
In the last year, federal, state and institutional decisions have gutted pillars of America's civil rights protections.
www.axios.com
discussed this in seminar yesterday, albeit with reference to “race science” generally. If you understand science as a historical phenomenon then the question is what was science then, not whether it would count as science now, and the implication is that what science is now is not forever, either
1. Historically, eugenics was not a pseudoscience. It was *science* Almost every scientist, social scientist, academic, etc. believed in the validity of eugenics. You would have to search far & wide to find a scientist that didn't believe in some form of it. They taught it in college!

This evening! 😃🤓
Some of the most meaningful materials I worked with for _Lineage_, conveying the infrastructural role of genealogy & the power of family, is at the American Antiquarian Society.

Excited to be there tomorrow night (& online) to talk abt the book! Info ⬇️
www.americanantiquarian.org/programs-eve...

Thank you!!

Some of the most meaningful materials I worked with for _Lineage_, conveying the infrastructural role of genealogy & the power of family, is at the American Antiquarian Society.

Excited to be there tomorrow night (& online) to talk abt the book! Info ⬇️
www.americanantiquarian.org/programs-eve...

I try not to express my reactions online but.

Every. Single. Aspect of this situation is through the looking glass. The drivers, ppl and stated principles, the levers and rationales, the perversity. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/u...
Why Trump and Harvard Have Not Reached a Deal
www.nytimes.com