Sarah Knott is a historian, feminist and, most recently, author of “Mother Is a Verb: An Unconventional History,” which she describes as “an exploration of pregnancy, birth and the encounter with an infant.” The New York Times described it as “a joy to read, born of raw curiosity and intelligence, nurtured into the world to fill a gap in understanding.”
When the Thouron Award brought her to Philadelphia, Knott says she found a community of some of the finest early American historians in the country — people who “shaped my thinking about what is history and how to be a historian.” Her first book on the American Revolution was located in that city, which she still considers her “real” American home. She is an associate professor of history and a research fellow of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and makes “intermittent” year-long returns to Oxford.
