About kent

Kent (he/him/his) completed his PhD in history at Florida State University in Spring 2020 and since July 2022 has been an Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Creole Heritage Center at Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches, LA.

Throughout his schooling and professional career in higher education, state government, and non profits, Kent has retained his love of the performing arts, tailgating and watching baseball and football, eating pizza, and reading (particularly “cozy” and historical mysteries).

Kent was born and spent his pre-college days in the northern suburbs of Detroit, MI. He attended American University in Washington, DC, earning a double BA in American Studies and Sociology and a minor in Music Performance (Piano). 

For almost three years after graduation he worked in administrative roles with non-profit organizations, primarily the Family Equality Council, the leading advocacy group for LGBT-headed families.

Kent returned to academia in 2009 to earn a MA in American Studies from George Washington University and worked in the University’s Office of Graduate Assistantships and Fellowships.

He moved to Tallahassee, FL in 2011 and worked as a Living History Interpreter at Mission San Luis, a state-owned museum representing the 17th-century colonial Spanish government center, Franciscan mission, and Apalachee community located at the site.

He began his doctoral studies at FSU in 2012 and between 2016 and 2020 Kent taught survey courses there in Latin American history, US history before 1877, and the social history of the United States.

Kent graduated in May 2020 as a historian of gender and sexuality with primary training in the histories of United States and Latin America and particular interest in the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods. His main research combines social and legal history to examine how the variety of peoples in the Trans-Appalachian West utilized and influenced settler states to define and regulate sexual behaviors and desires during the Early Republic (1787-1825).