Eva Payne

I am a historian of the 19th- and 20th-century U.S. with a focus on women, gender, sexuality, and U.S. empire. I am currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi and received a PhD from Harvard University in 2017.

My first book, Empire of Purity: The History of Americans’ Global War on Prostitution was published by Princeton University Press in 2024.

I am also involved with several public history projects, including the Queer Mississippi Histories Project, which documents and preserves LGBTQ life in Mississippi, and You Should Never Blink, a documentary film about pop artist and nun Corita Kent.