Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Department
Pearl’s research interests are in early American history, especially the American Revolution. His new book, Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution (UVA Press, 2024), traces the eighteenth-century struggle for power in Pennsylvania’s Northern Susquehanna River Valley, where Indigenous nations, rebellious settlers, and land speculators all pursued competing visions of independence. This work builds on his earlier book, Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State (UVA Press, 2020), which explored how ineffective colonial governance and imperial politics spurred a new state into being during the Revolution.
Pearl grew up in Allegany, N.Y.—a small town on the New York–Pennsylvania border about two hours north of Williamsport. Like his research, his classes explore the many dimensions of early American political and legal culture. Students in his courses examine topics such as the Salem Witch Trials, early America’s Indigenous history, the popular politics of the American Revolution, and the intersection of law and society in the founding era. His courses invite students to engage with history in lively, hands-on ways, bringing the past to life through discussion, debate, and on-site exploration. His American Revolution course includes a trip to Old City Philadelphia to explore the streets, buildings, and meeting places that shaped the nation’s founding, while his American Civil War course takes students to the Gettysburg battlefield to engage with the war’s history on the ground.
Selected Publications
- Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution. University of Virginia Press, 2024
- Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize (’25)
- Reconsidering the Critical Period, with Douglas Bradburn. University of Virginia Press, 2022.
- “Becoming Patriots: The Struggle for Inclusion and Exclusion on Pennsylvania’s Revolutionary Frontier,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 88, no. 3 (2021), 362-401
- Winner of the Philip S. Klein Article Prize (’23)
- Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State. University of Virginia Press, 2020.
- “Our God, and Our Guns”: Religion and Politics on the Revolutionary Frontier” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 85, no. 1 (2018), 58-89.
- “Pulpits of Revolution: Presbyterian Political Thought in the Era of the American Revolution,” The Journal of Presbyterian History, 95 No. 1 Spring/Summer 2017, 4-17.
- With Lycoming College student Maggie Slawson '17, "No Sunshine Patriots: Three Stories of Revolution on the West Branch," The Journal of the Lycoming County Historical Society, Vol. LII (2016), 2-10.
Awards
Junior Faculty Teaching Award (2015)
Lycoming College
Howard C. Berthold Faculty Research and Information Competencies Award (2016)
Lycoming College
Research Grants & Fellowships
David Center for the American Revolution
Resident Research Fellowship 2020
Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies
Resident Research Fellowship 2020
Presbyterian Historical Society
Resident Research Fellowship 2014