Carolyn Zola is a postdoctoral fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia, Program in Early American Economy and Society. Her dissertation, “Public Women: Urban Provisioners in Nineteenth Century America,” focuses on women who sold food in northeastern port cities between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries to offer a radical rethinking of the seemingly familiar story of American economic and urban transformation.

A recipient of Stanford University’s Centennial Teaching Assistant Award, Carolyn Zola has received research support from the American Association of University Women, the Library Company of Philadelphia Program in Early American Economy and Society, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Stanford Humanities Center. Born and raised in the Bay Area, before pursuing her PhD at Stanford she worked in theater, studied at City College of San Francisco, and earned her B.A. in History at U.C. Berkeley.