Frances M Clarke

Associate Professor Frances M. Clarke is a historian in the School of Humanities at the University of Sydney. She earned her PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 2002. After completing her doctorate, Clarke worked as a research associate for the American Historical Association for one year. She then joined the University of Sydney's History Department as a lecturer and has advanced to the rank of Associate Professor. In this role, she teaches a range of courses on American history spanning from the colonial period to the twentieth century. Clarke's research specialties encompass the history of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era; war, memory, and trauma; the history of childhood; and the social, legal, political, and cultural dimensions of nineteenth-century America.

Clarke's scholarly contributions include her first monograph, War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (University of Chicago Press, 2012), which received the Australian Historical Association’s biennial Hancock Prize for the best first book in any field of history. In 2023, she co-authored Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era with Rebecca Jo Plant (Oxford University Press). This book, which investigates underage enlistment during the American Civil War—revealing that ten times more soldiers aged 10-17 participated than previously estimated—earned the 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, the most distinguished award in Civil War scholarship, with Clarke becoming the first Australian winner. Additional key publications feature “No Minor Matter: Underage Soldiers, Parents, and the Nationalization of Habeas Corpus in Civil War America” (Law and History Review, 2017, with Plant), “The Crowning Insult: Federal Segregation and the Gold Star Mother and Widow Pilgrimages of the Early 1930s” (Journal of American History, 2015, with Plant), “So Lonesome I Could Die: Nostalgia and Debates over Emotional Control in the Civil War North” (Journal of Social History, 2007), and contributions to Remembering the Revolution: Memory, History, and Nation Making from Independence to the Civil War (2013). She has also served as an editor for the Australasian Journal of American Studies, contributing editorial notes in 2019 and 2020.

Professional Email: frances.clarke@sydney.edu.au