Hayley Rucker
Assistant Professor of History
220 Weaver Building 212 Curtin Road
University Park, PA 16802
Education:
B.A. in History and Art Practice, University of California, Berkeley, 2008
M.A. in History, University of Arizona, 2012
Ph.D. in History, University of California, Berkeley, 2023
Biography:
I am a cultural historian of eighteenth-century France and the Atlantic World. My research examines the social implications of a rising global market through the lens of the ship, tracing voyages from metropolitan France to West Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and China. Incorporating digital humanities tools and close readings of archival texts, I analyze how captive Africans and free seamen forged mobile social worlds, as global trade stretched and ruptured local ties. My work follows social transformation under the extraordinary pressures of a nascent capitalist economy.