The Secret and Sometimes Sinister History of Our Birth Certificates (with Susan J. Pearson)

If you have one, your American birth certificate may be the most powerful piece of paper you own.

It can open doors to citizenship, school, employment, and legal recognition. Which means it can also been used to enforce segregation, restrict marriage, erase Native identities, police gender, and m re.

Historian Susan J. Pearson uncovers the surprising history of the birth certificate and reveals how a seemingly mundane document became a powerful tool for defining race, family, and belonging in America.

At a moment when birth certificates are once again at the center of political battles over sex and gender, this history offers an essential guide to understanding what these documents do—for good and ill.

Susan is the author of The Birth Certificate: An American History.

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org. 

About the Guest

Susan J. Pearson (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, 2004) is an historian of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. She is particularly interested in the cultural politics of reform, the expansion of the state and forms of governance, and the development of American liberalism. Professor Pearson is the author of two prize-winning books, including The Birth Certificate: An American History. She has also published essays and articles in The Journal of American History, History and Theory, The Journal of Social History, Modern American History, and the Journal of the Civil War Era.