Professor Susan PearsonProfessor of History, Northwestern University, United StatesEmail: sjp@northwestern.eduProfilePublicationsExpertiseProfileSusan Pearson is an historian of the United States and a specialist in statebuilding.ResearchPublicationsThe Birth Certificate: An American History (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) “`Facts Which Might Be Embarrassing’: Illegitimacy, Vital Registration, and State Knowledge,” in Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern US History, edited by Margot Canaday, Nancy Cott, and Robert Self (University of Chicago Press, 2021) The Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2011) “A New Birth of Regulation: The State of the State after the Civil War,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5 (2015): 422-439 “`Age Ought to Be a Fact’: The Campaign against Child Labor and the Rise of the Birth Certificate,” Journal of American History 101 (2015): 1144-1165.ExpertiseBirth registration, birth certificates, state building, animal and child protection organizations