Susan Jennifer Pearson is an American historian of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As anassociate professor atNorthwestern University, she received the 2012Merle Curti Award for her bookThe Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America.

Pearson earned herBachelor of Arts degree fromOberlin College before enrolling at theUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for herMaster's degree and PhD.^[1]

Upon receiving her PhD in 2004, Pearson joined the Department of History atNorthwestern University as anassistant professor.^[1] In this role, she published her first book titledThe Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America, which received the 2012Merle Curti Award.^[2] The book focused on the history of child and animal protective services working together in the nineteenth century to protect youth and animals from abuse.^[3][4] Following the publication of the book, Pearson received a yearlong National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her projectA History of Birth Registration in America.^[5] The project was later retitled asRegistering Birth: Population and Personhood in American History and she received a Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship from theAmerican Council of Learned Societies.^[6] In 2015, she publishedAge Ought to Be a Fact: The Campaign against Child Labor and the Rise of the Birth Certificate, which discussed the difficulty states face when enforcing child labor laws due to lack of access to birth records.^[7]

Pearson is divorced and has two children.^[2]

• Susan J. Pearson publications indexed byGoogle Scholar

• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American women
• American animal welfare scholars
• American women historians
• Living people
• Northwestern University faculty
• Oberlin College alumni
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• Year of birth missing (living people)