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Research Interests

Rebecca's primary area of interest is sub-political ideology and its cultural manifestations, with a particular focus on trade identities and national sentiment.

 

Her dissertation project focuses on agrarian identity and the American right in the post-World War Two period. She employs a multivalenced approach to the topic, incorporating themes of American political development, cultural analysis and political history in her methodology. Her interest in identities in decline began in the Knesset members' dining room, when she found herself asking a Labor MK what exactly his party believed in. Although the research leap from the Knesset dining room to the American heartland may seem enormous, her fundamental question remains the same: What do you do when the practice that defines you is no longer relevant? To that end, Rebecca recently completed a multi-year project on the New England whaling industry resulted from a chance encounter at Mystic Seaport between her then-two-year-old son and the last 

surviving wooden whaleship, the Charles W. Morgan. She is an authoritative source on the commemoration of the whaling industry, as well as the decline of American whaling.

 

In the field of political sentiment, Rebecca is also working on a long-term project on economic thought among right-wing parties in Israel. She recently completed the first in a series of paper detailing economic ideology in the Revisionist Movement and its associated political institutions from its inception until the formation of the Likud Party. 

 

Rebecca is the proud recipient of the unofficial NASOH conference award for most entertaining panel presentation, no small accomplishment when lecturing on the decline of the American whaling industry and memory theory. Described by a faculty member as a "stand-up historian", she hopes to prove through her work that rigourous conceptual frameworks do not have to result in dry history. Most students have survived their contact with her, although one did express concern that she was "scary".  She is still trying to figure that one out. For further information on Rebecca's academic interests, including links to her recent papers, please visit her academia.edu site.

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