The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
The Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies

Dr. Kassabaum is an anthropological archaeologist who specializes in pre-contact Native America. She began her education at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, where she earned a B.A. (2005) in Anthropology and Philosophy and focused her research on Middle Woodland period (200 BC–AD 500) craft production in the Lower Illinois River Valley.  She then went on to earn a Ph.D. (2014) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her dissertation research focused on Coles Creek period (AD 700–1200) earthen mound sites in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In addition to this research in Illinois and Mississippi, she has also excavated in South Carolina and Peru. Dr. Kassabaum is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and an Assistant Curator in the American Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. As part of these positions, she directs the North American Archaeology Laboratory at Penn and Smith Creek Archaeological Project in Wilkinson County, Mississippi.