Research Interests

Brian Rouleau received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 and joined the history department at Texas A&M the same year. He specializes in the nineteenth-century United States, American foreign relations, and the history of childhood. His first book, With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire, explored the role of sailors in connecting the early United States with the wider world. Rouleau’s second book, Empire’s Nursery: Children’s Literature and the Origins of the American Century, traced the importance of dime novels, pulp fiction, and comic books in educating young Americans about their nation’s growing global obligations. He is currently at work on two projects. One investigates connections between comics and the history of the United States in the world. The other examines the 1894 murder of an American citizen in Honduras and how it became an international incident that helped transform Uncle Sam into a hemispheric hegemon. Rouleau teaches courses on the long nineteenth century, diplomatic history, the American Revolution, the U.S. West, American popular culture, and the history of children and the family.

Publications

Empire’s Nursery: Children’s Literature and the Origins of the American Century (New York: New York University Press, 2021)

With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014)