Katherine Mooney is interested in the cultural history of inequality in the United States--how it is imagined and made into political and legal discourse, how it plays out in people's daily lives. She primarily works on the history of slavery and its legacies. Her book, Race Horse Men, examines the generations of black men who worked with Thoroughbred horses from the colonial period to the 1920s. She is presently at work on two new projects, a biography of one of the first African-American sports heroes, Isaac Murphy, and a project about ideas of gender and how they map onto animals in the United States.

Publications:

Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack 

Ruined By This Miserable War: The Dispatches of Charles Prosper Fauconnet

Teaching:

Fall 2020

History of American Popular Culture, 1850-present (IDS course co-taught with Dr. Robbins)

AMH 4172 The Civil War Era

Graduate colloquium Historian's Practice