Jen Manion is a social and cultural historian, author, and professor of History and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies at

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...

. Manion is the author of '' Female Husbands: A Trans History'' and '' Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America''.

Early life and education

Manion was raised in the borough of St.Clair, outside of

Pottsville, Pennsylvania Pottsville is a city and the county seat of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 13,346 at the 2020 census, and is the principal city of the Pottsville, PA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies along the wes ...

. In a 2018 essay that describes Manion's childhood experiences, Manion wrote, "I have always been a gender warrior and a gender outlaw." Manion completed a BA in history from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, and a PhD in history from

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

Career

Manion was a member of the history department faculty at

Connecticut College Connecticut College (Conn) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut. Originally chartered as Thames College, it was founded in 1911 as the state's only women's colle ...

for ten years before becoming an associate professor at

in 2016. Manion was also the founding director of the LGBTQ Resource Center at Connecticut College. In 2021, Manion became a full professor at Amherst and received an honorary masters of arts degree. On writing, Manion has stated, "My topics choose me. As a historian, what I write about depends on what sources I have found. But I only spend time on things that have relevance beyond the world of academic history - such as mass incarceration or transgender liberation - otherwise, I do not think I am making the best use of my time and resources." In 2015, as an associate professor of history at Connecticut College, Manion published '' Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America''. In a 2016 interview, while discussing a developing research and writing project then titled "Born in the Wrong Time: Transgender Archives and the History of Possibility, 1770-1870," Manion stated, "most of the records are about such people rather than by them, so I try to write about people in broad, expansive ways that create space and possibility for how they might have lived, how they understood themselves, and how other people viewed and treated them", and further stated, "This project is partly about recovering an archive but it also very much about ''how we think and write about the past'' as well." '' Female Husbands: A Trans History'' was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

Books

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Awards

* 2016 Mary Kelley Book Prize by the

Society for Historians of the Early American Republic The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) is an organization that was established in 1977 to study the history of the United States in the period between 1775 and 1861. The Society holds annual conferences, awards prizes and ...

(''Liberty's Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America'') * 2020 British Association for Victorian Studies Best Book Prize (''Female Husbands: A Trans History'') * Finalist, 2021

Lawrence W. Levine Award The Lawrence W. Levine Award is an annual book award made by the Organization of American Historians (OAH). The award goes to the best book in American cultural history.http://www.oah.org/programs/awards/lawrence-w-levine-award/ Last viewed Septembe ...

, Organization of American Historians (''Female Husbands: A Trans History'')

Honors

* 2018 elected member of the

Massachusetts Historical Society The Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) is a major historical archive specializing in early American, Massachusetts, and New England history. The Massachusetts Historical Society was established in 1791 and is located at 1154 Boylston Street ...

* 2020 elected member of the

American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in ...

Personal life

Manion married Jessica Halem in

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown () is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States census, Provi ...

in 2014.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Manion, Jen Living people 21st-century American historians Historians from Pennsylvania Amherst College faculty Connecticut College faculty University of Pennsylvania alumni Rutgers University alumni Transgender non-binary people Year of birth missing (living people) LGBTQ people from Pennsylvania American non-binary writers