Willa is a doctoral Teaching Fellow at Fordham University finishing a Ph.D. in economic and environmental history. Her specialization is in the ecosystems and economies of the early American republic, specifically: agrarian communities’ systems of economic control and decontrol.
Willa's work focuses on how communities used things we don’t usually ascribe money-ness to (e.g. wheat, whiskey) to enact monetary policy, attempting to assert their own economic autonomy in doing so. Her research focuses on how monetary and fiscal programs are developed in times of crisis, and how groups of people managed their relations to the land and the value flows produced by/with that land.
Willa was born and raised in Indiana. With her wife, Janneane, she ran Printtext, a bookstore and community space, where she published cultural broadsheets, designed album covers, and made books about soundscape ecologies. Their most recent book project was Stations: Listening to the Deep Earth (Jap Sam Books, 2022) commissioned by the Anchorage Museum and National Geographic Society.
Willa and Janneane now live in the Lower East Side with their four year old.
Working Papers:
“Price and Possibility: Alternatives to market integration in agrarian New England communities, 1780-1800”
“High Stakes and Low Finance in the Imperial Backwoods: Municipal Price Ratios in Kingston, NY, 1660-1680”
Dissertation, in progress:
Money Against the State: A History of Money and Its Stakeholders in the Hudson Valley, 1652-1811 (under Samantha Iyer and Steven Stoll)
Courses Taught, 2023-2026:
HIST 1100 Ecology and Climate in American History - syllabus
HIST 3990 Environmental History of North America and the Atlantic World - syllabus
HIST 3987 Economic and Environmental History of Early America - syllabus
Fellowships and Research Grants:
GSAS Doctoral Summer Research Grant, 2026
Teaching Fellowship, Fordham, 2023-2026
O’Connell Initiative Research Grant, 2024
American Studies Assistantship, Fordham, 2022-2023
GSAS Centennial Scholarship, Fordham, 2022-2023
Merit Scholarship, NSSR, 2020-2022
Graduate Studies Stipend, NSSR, 2020-2022
Advising:
Academic Advisor for Gabelli School of Business ‘Sustainable Finance’ Student Group, 2026
Education: MA, New School for Social Research (with honors)
Thesis (under Clara Mattei and Aaron Jakes): “Whiskey-money and a Frontier Economics of Abundance: Tracing the monetary innovations of western Pennsylvania, 1780-1800”
Research Assistantship for McKenzie Wark, 2020-2021
Books:
Stations: Listening to the Deep Earth; editor and designer. Commissioned by the Anchorage Museum and National Geographic; published by Jap Sam Books, 2022
Metaphonics: The Field Works Listener’s Guide; editor and designer. Published by Jap Sam Books, 2018. Presented at the Stedelijk, Wiels, and Riga Triennial in 2018
Projects:
Pattern, 2009-2013
IndySpectator etc, 2009-2013
Broadsheets and other publications:
Languages:
Spanish
German