People

Cassandra L. Yacovazzi

Associate Professor

CONTACT information and cv

Office: C243
Phone: 941-359-4344
Email: cyacovazzi@usf.edu
Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION

University of Missouri, PhD, 2015

TEACHING

My classes focus on American history from the time of exploration to the present, often centering on race, class, gender, religion, and cultural history. I offer several lecture courses in these areas, including “American Women I” (AMH3561), “American Women II” (AMH3562), “United States, 1914-1945” (AMH3231), “United States, 1877-1914” (AMH3201), “Research Methods in History: Utopian Experiments in America” (HIS3900), and “Research Methods in History: The Transformation of America, 1960-1980” (HIS3900). I have also taught courses on American Religious History, American History through Literature, and Nativism and Immigration in the US. In the classroom, I encourage students to move beyond memorization to assessing, valuing, and interpreting the past by grappling with conflicting evidence and multiple viewpoints. I include assignments that foster critical and creative thinking and provide the opportunity for students to work as historians by handling primary sources and entering the conversation of secondary scholarship. Finally it is important to me to create an environment of free inquiry where students feel acknowledged and respected.

RESEARCH

My research focuses on the intersection of women’s work, religion, and consumerism. My first book is Escaped Nuns: True Womanhood and the Campaign Against Convents in Antebellum America (Oxford University Press, 2018), which was reviewed in the New York Review of Books.

Currently I am writing a book on Mary Kay Ash and Mary Kay Inc., the cosmetics company, exploring the ways in which women created a network of support, forged new avenues of business, participated in and helped define the beauty culture, and reconciled religion with capitalism within the context of the late twentieth century US. My previous work also looked at female communities, examining Catholic nuns and opposition to them in the first half of the nineteenth century US.