Dr Marie Molloy
Senior Lecturer in American History
My profile
Biography
I am a Senior Lecturer in American History, and my research is focused on slavery, race and gender in the nineteenth-century American South. I love my job in all its different facets: long summers of research in the States, being in the classroom with students, and doing outreach work with schools and colleges in the region. When I am not working, I am busy with my family. I have three daughters and two bichon frise dogs. I love Cornwall, and we spend as much time there as possible!
Words of wisdom
One of my favourite quotations is Nelson Mandela’s: ‘It always seems impossible until it’s done!’
Work hard, enjoy the journey, read and be curious!
Academic and professional qualifications
2013: PhD American History (Keele Univeristy)
2007: MA American History (Keele University)
Teaching
Why do I teach?
After I finished my A levels, I spent a gap year in the Transkei, South Africa, where I taught History in an African school for 12 months. This had a tremendous impact on me, not only in terms of understanding
more about race relations and systems of inequality, but also in realising the transformative impact of education on people at any stage in their lives. Education holds the promise of a better future, and by teaching History in particular, we are provided with the tools to learn about the past, in order to make a better future. This is why I teach. I love to work with young people, and feel inspired and privileged discussing important issues with them every week in the classroom.
How I’ll teach you
I am an enthusiastic and engaging lecturer. My classroom (whether virtually or online) aim to be inclusive, interactive spaces that students regularly say they enjoy being in!
Research outputs
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Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Sandy, L.R., Molloy, M.S. (2019) The Civil War and Slavery Reconsidered Negotiating the Peripheries. Routledge.
Molloy, M.S. (2018) Single, White, Slaveholding Women in the Nineteenth-Century American South. Univ of South Carolina Press.
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Chapters in books
Molloy, M.S. 'Class, Color and Conflict: Separation and Divorce in Southern White Marriage in the Civil War Era.' The Civil War and Slavery Reconsidered: Negotiating the Peripheries. Routledge,
Sandy, L.R., Molloy, M. 'Introduction: Negotiating the Peripheries.' The Civil War and Slavery Reconsidered: Negotiating the Peripheries.
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Journal articles
Molloy, M. (2022) '‘An illicit and criminal intercourse’: adultery and marital breakdown in the slaveholding South.' American Nineteenth Century History, 22(3) pp. 253-269.
Molloy, M.S. (2016) '"A Noble Class of Old Maids": Surrogate Motherhood, Sibling Support, and Self-Sufficiency in the Nineteenth-Century White, Southern Family.' Journal of Family History, 41(4) pp. 402-429.
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Non-peer reviewed articles / reviews
Molloy, M. (2022) Molloy, Marie S. “They Were Her Property: White Slave-Owning Women in the American South. By Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. 320 Pp. Illustrations, Notes, Bibliography, Index. Paperback, $18.00. ISBN: 978-0-300-25183-8.” Business History Review 96, no. 4 (2022): 879–82. doi:10.1017/S0007680522000368..