Research Interests

Colonial North America and the United States in the Early Republic

• Social, Cultural, and Political history of poverty
• Paupers, the recipients of public assistance
• Moral questions and Reform movements in American history
• "Town Fathers" in the late colonial and early republic periods: the men, such as town councilmen or overseers of the poor, who governed their neighbors more completely than any king, president, legislature or Supreme Court

Current Book Project

Five Lives Shaped by the Poor Law: A History of Welfare in Early Republican Rhode Island

Regularly Taught Courses

• History 201 United States History to 1877
• History 339 Public History
• History 361 Colonial North America
• History 363 American Indian History
• History 364 The Early American Republic, 1787-1828
• History 411 (American History Senior Seminar) Reading American Newspapers, 1740-1840

Spring 2013 Office Hours

I'm in Hungary on a Fulbright Teaching Award for the Spring of 2013. Check out my blog at http://oshkoshtopecs.blogspot.hu/

Contact Information

• Address: Sage Hall 3615
• Phone: (920) 424-1409
• Email: loiacong@uwosh.edu