Amanda Regan

Assistant Professor; Director of Graduate Studies

Contact
Department of History
Office: Hardin Hall 004
Phone: Hardin Hall 004
Website: http://www.amanda-regan.com
Schedule an Appointment: https://amanda-regan.com/office-hours/
Email: aeregan@clemson.edu

Education
PhD, George Mason University (2019); MA, California State University, San Marcos (2013)

Research Interests
US 1877-1975; Digital Methods; Women's History; Cultural history

Amanda (Mandy) Regan is a historian of the late-nineteenth and twentieth-century United States and a specialist in digital and computational history. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Geography at Clemson University, where she also serves as Director of Graduate Studies overseeing both the History M.A. degree and the first-of-its-kind Digital History Ph.D. program. She develops methods that uncover previously invisible patterns in the historical record, combining large-scale data analysis, geospatial mapping, and algorithmic approaches with traditional archival research to advance understanding of American history.

Prof. Regan's first book, Shaping Up: Women, Physical Fitness, and American Society (University of Virginia Press, forthcoming April 2027), traces how fitness became a mechanism for measuring and regulating women's bodies across nearly a century. Beginning with the eugenic-influenced definitions that emerged in the late nineteenth century, the book shows how fitness was never really about health or strength but served as an evolving standard for policing who counted as "fit" to participate in American life.

Alongside her research, Prof. Regan teaches the graduate digital methods sequence that anchors Clemson's Digital History Ph.D. Her courses train students to treat primary sources as data and to think computationally as a core historical skill. Increasingly, part of that work means thinking critically about what artificial intelligence makes possible for historical research and teaching, as well as its limits, biases, and failings. She serves on Clemson University's AI Council and is currently co-editing a special issue on "AI and History" for the Journal of Digital History. She is also the Co-Vice President/President Elect of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), the professional organization for digital humanities in the United States.

Prof. Regan earned her Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2019. From 2013 to 2015 she held a Digital History Fellowship at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), where she subsequently managed software development for the PressForward Project and served as managing editor of Digital Humanities Now. Before joining Clemson, she was a Digital Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow at Southern Methodist University's Center for Presidential History. Her digital projects are available online, and her code can be viewed on GitHub.

Selected Professional Works

Books (In Production or Under Contract)

Shaping Up: Physical Fitness Initiatives for Women, 1880-1965 (forthcoming from the University of Virginia Press, Spring 2027).

Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)

Amanda Regan, Laura Crossley, and Josh Catalano, “Grant Funded Research and Graduate Student Success," in Digital Futures of Graduate Study in the Humanities, ed. Anouk Lang, Gabriel Hankins and Simon Appleford. (University of Minnesota Press, December 2024.)

“Mining Mind and Body: Approaches and Considerations for Using Topic Modeling to Identify Discourses in Digitized Publications,” Journal of Sport History 44, no. 2 (Summer 2017):160-77. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.44.2.0160

Digital Works, Videos, CDs & DVDs, Software (Published)

“Mining Eleanor Roosevelt’s My Day Columns,” with Joshua Catalano, May 2017. https:// regan008.shinyapps.io/mining my day/

“Mapping Gymnasiums in Boston,” Visualization. http://amanda-regan.com/bostongymnasiums/.