Where Revolutionary Ideals Become Reality

Sarah Purcell

Sarah Purcell is the L. F. Parker Professor of History at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, where she teaches classes on eighteenth and nineteenth-century U.S. History, transnational revolutions, public memory, popular culture, and digital history. She is the author of Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in Civil War America (UNC Press, 2022), Sealed with Blood: War Sacrifice and Memory in Revolutionary America (U. Penn Press, 2002), and The Early American Republic: An Eyewitness History (Facts on File, 2004). 

She has co-authored several other books, including The Encyclopedia of Battles in North America, 1517-1916 (revised ed., 2025), and American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Perspective, 5th ed. (Oxford, 2025), the first textbook to place U.S. history in a global context. She writes articles and book reviews for both scholarly and media outlets. 

Purcell is dedicated to fostering student research in History, Digital Humanities, and American Studies, and she was the recipient of the 2019 Council for Undergraduate Research Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research in the Social Sciences award. 

Purcell has a strong interest in K-12 history education and frequently contributes to teacher development programs run by the George Washington Teachers Institute, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, Humanities Texas, and other institutions.

Brigida Blasi

Brigida R. (Brie) Blasi is the Head of Education and Outreach at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center, where she oversees instruction, exhibits, public programming, and the Wyoming History Day program. 

She holds a BA in Humanities/Fine Arts from the University of Wyoming (UW), an MA in History with an emphasis in Public History from New Mexico State University, and an MS in Library Science from the University of North Texas. She is also part of UW’s inaugural cohort of a PhD program in Public Humanities.

Brie has spent her career working in museums, historic sites, archives, and in historic preservation. Her specialties have been in curation, museum and nonprofit management, underrepresented histories of the im/migrant US West, and local and family history research.

Allison Wickens

K. Allison Wickens, Vice President for Education, joined George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the summer of 2014. She currently leads the Education and Guest Services division and oversees the learning goals for the institution for onsite, offsite, and digital outreach programs.

She represents Mount Vernon in national discussions about museums, historic sites, and how they relate to history and civics education today.

Before arriving at Mount Vernon, she had been at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, serving as their Director of Education and Visitor Services. She received her Master’s Degree in History at the University of Colorado, Boulder where she got a certificate in Museum Studies.

Between her undergraduate work at Grinnell College and graduate school, she lived and worked in Washington, D.C. at a wide variety of Smithsonian museums and offices.