Charlotte Carrington-Farmer
Areas of Expertise
Colonial America and the Early Modern Atlantic WorldEducation
University of Cambridge
Dr. Charlotte Carrington-Farmer is an Associate Professor of History, and she specialises in early American History. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2010. From her dissertation, she published a biography of Thomas Morton in: Atlantic Lives: Biographies that Cross the Ocean (Leiden and Boson: Brill, 2014.) Her interest in dissent in seventeenth-century New England also led to her publishing a chapter entitled: ‘Roger Williams and the Architecture of Religious Liberty,’ in Jahid Hossain Bhuiyan and Darryn Jenson eds., Law and Religion and the Liberal State (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2020.) Building on her interest in Roger Williams, she is currently working on a journal article on Mary Williams, tentatively titled: ‘Roger Williams had a Wife: Writing Mary Williams née Barnard Back into the Historical Record.’
Dr. Carrington-Farmer has a keen interest in equine history in the early modern Atlantic World. Her research examines the breeding and export of horses from New England to West Indies and South America and its intersection with enslaved lives and labour. She has published an article entitled ‘The Rise and Fall of the Narragansett Pacer,’ Rhode Island History, Winter/Spring 2018, Volume 76, Number 1, pp. 1-38. The article was accompanied by an exhibition of her research on the Narragansett Pacer horse, which was installed in the Providence Arcade from May to July 2018 by the Rhode Island Historical Society. She has written a chapter entitled: ‘Trading Horses in the Eighteenth Century: Rhode Island and the Atlantic World,’ in Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld, eds., Equine Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity, 1700-Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), which won the ACRL Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Award 2019.
Dr. Carrington-Farmer has reviewed books for the Journal of American History, Connecticut History Review, History: Reviews of New Books, and the Equine History Collective. She has written pieces for The Junto, The Spectacle of Toleration, and Newport Historical Society blogs, and recorded podcasts for the Knowing Animals series.
Dr. Carrington-Farmer teaches the following courses:
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Pirates, Sailors, and Whalers: America and the Atlantic World
- Crime and Dissent in Early New England
- Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America
- Slavery in the Americas
- Dimensions of History (class and lab)
- Community Partnership Center: History
- Colonial and Revolutionary America
- Securing the American Republic
- Core 102: The Challenges of Democracy
Dr. Carrington-Farmer integrates Community Partnership Center (CPC) projects into her classes, and she formerly held a Hassenfeld Fellowship for Community Engagement.
Dr. Carrington-Farmer’s previous CPC projects include:
- King Philip’s War battle site project with Central Falls government
- Eighteenth-century house project with Newport Restoration Foundation
- Early oyster industry project with Warren community members
- General Burnside and the Civil War with the Bristol Historical and Preservation Society
- Early women in sail boat racing with the Herreshoff Museum
Dr. Carrington-Farmer is the coordinator for Core 102, and heavily involved in the First Year Roger Seminar. Learn more here. Dr. Carrington-Farmer uses ‘Reacting to the Past’ (RTTP) in Core 102. See the ‘Trial of Anne Hutchinson’ game in action here. RTTP involves elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. This allows students to “live” in a particular historical moment and take control of the classroom. Dr. Carrington-Farmer is part of the RWU team who received an Endeavor Grant to pioneer the pedagogy at RWU. See here.
Dr. Carrington-Farmer has won the following awards for teaching at RWU:
Hybrid Hero Teaching Award (2020)
Alpha Chi Honors Society Faculty Recognition Award (2019 and 2018)
Dr. Mark Gould Award for Commitment to Student Learning (2018)
Faculty Ally of the Year, Multicultural Student Union Award (2018)
Professor of the Semester, Student Senate Award (2017)
Outstanding Contribution to Innovations in Teaching, Department of Instructional Design Award (2015)
Dr. Carrington-Farmer is a faculty advisor for the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children (Peru, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Ecuador sites) and Amizade (Navajo Nation site.) See the following websites for details: