Alisa Wade

Dr. Alisa Wade is a historian of early America, with a focus on the intersections of the history of gender and capitalism in the eighteenth century.  In particular, Professor Wade researches and writes about patterns of women’s investing and the economic status of widows in the revolutionary and early national United States and broader Atlantic world. Her current book manuscript, “An Alliance of Ladies: Power, Public Affairs, and Class Consolidation in Early National New York City,” looks at elite women’s position within the political economy of post-revolutionary lower Manhattan, assessing their role in stabilizing the city’s leadership class in the 1780s and 1790s.  She was a 2016-2017 Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow, jointly held through the New-York Historical Society and the New School, and a 2017-2018 Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society Postdoctoral Fellow.  Professor Wade is also interested in public history and material culture studies, and previously served on curatorial staff for an exhibit at the Center for Women’s History in New York.