Savannah Flanagan

Advisor

Dr. Andrea Turpin

Education

M.A. in History, Virginia Tech, 2022

Certificate in Public History, Virginia Tech, 2022

B.A. in History, North Carolina Wesleyan University, 2020

B.A. in Religious Studies, North Carolina Wesleyan University, 2020

B.A. in Entertainment Theatre, North Carolina Wesleyan University, 2020

Research Interests

Savannah Flanagan is a historian of reproductive health, religion, and the body in the early American republic. Her dissertation project examines women in communal religious groups — Quakers, Moravians, Catholics, and Shakers — to reframe the history of reproductive health care. She argues that these communities understood reproductive health expansively, encompassing menstruation, infertility, miscarriage, menopause, and cancer alongside pregnancy and childbirth, and that they built systems of care to address these concerns. 

Selected Publications

Savannah Jane Flanagan. "Pastoral Maternity Care: The Moravians' Utopian Vision of Reproductive Healthcare and its Limitations." American Religions, Spring, 2026. 

Savannah Jane Flanagan. "life went out like a candle": Smallpox and the Early Moravian Community of North Carolina." Journal of the Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science, 2025. 

Savannah Jane Flanagan. "The Troubled History of Medical Harm to Black Women." Black Perspectives, 2024. https://www.aaihs.org/the-troubled-history-of-medical-harm-to-blackwomen/

Savannah Jane Flanagan. "Listening to Women Nurses and Caretakers: A Case Study from the Smallpox Epidemic Among North Carolina Moravians." NursingClio, 2024. 

Selected Activities

Academic Awards

• Recognition for Excellence in Teaching, Baylor Graduate School 2025
• Omnium: The Undergraduate Research Journal at North Carolina Wesleyan University First Prize Winner of the 2020 Academic Writing Competition-Social Sciences
• History Major Outstanding Student Award, North Carolina Wesleyan University, 2020
• Religious Studies Award, North Carolina Wesleyan University, 2020

Fellowships

• Medical Heritage Library's Education Resources Fellowship, June–August 2023
• Graduate School Fellowship, Baylor University, 2022
• Society of Early Americanists Digital Fellow, 2021
• Graduate School Assistantship, Virginia Tech 2020

Grants

• Baylor Graduate School Summer Dissertation Fellow, 2026
• Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism Research Travel Grant, 2026
• Communal Studies Association Research Fellowship, 2025
• Moravian Archives Vernon Nelson Research Grant, 2025

Recent Presentations

The Society of Historians of the Early Republic – Summer 2026 "Women’s Healthcare Beyond Reproduction: Celibate Shakers and Single Moravian Sisters’ Healthcare in the Early Republic"

Communal Studies Association Annual Conference – Fall 2025 "Women’s Health in Utopia: Reimagining and Challenging Reproductive Medicine in 19th-Century Religious Communities"

American Association for the History of Medicine – Winter 2025 "Managing Menstruation in Utopia: How Two Intentional Religious Communities Addressed Menstruation in the New Republic"