Bio

Derek Kane O'Leary is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow focusing on colonial American and early U.S. history. His book project, Building the American Archive in the Atlantic World, 1776-1876, explores the emergence of archives and historiography in the early U.S. He received his Ph.D. from the History Department at University of California, Berkeley, MA in International Relations from Tufts University, and BA from Amherst College.

Courses

Hist 111: United States History prior to 1865

Hist 201: Founding Documents

Recent publications

with Dr. Elise Garritsen, “19th-century Archives,” in Libraries, Archives, and Museums: An Introduction to Cultural Heritage Institutions through the Ages (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021)

“Archival Lines, Historical Practice, and the Atlantic Geopolitics behind
the 1842 Webster–Ashburton Treaty,” in The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders, ed. by the American Philosophical Society (June 2021)

“Washington Writing in the Archival Space of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s The Linwoods (1835)” (Harvard Library Bulletin, Winter 2020)

“Reclaiming Maine’s Archive and History in the Atlantic World, 1822-1876” (Maine History, Fall 2020)

“New Netherlands, Archival Deficiency, and Contesting New York History in the Antebellum U.S.” (Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies, Fall 2019)