Jenny Hale Pulsipher: Mormon Scholar

Jenny Hale Pulsipher is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her research focuses on Native Americans and Europeans in early America.

Pulsipher and her husband, Mike, were both Spencer W. Kimball scholars at BYU. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English in 1985 and her master’s degree in International and Area Studies with the Kennedy International Center at BYU in 1989. She began teaching at BYU in 1998 and received her PhD in American history from Brandeis University in 1999. She is a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, a fellow of the Pilgrim Society, and a member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

Her first book, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (2005, University of Pennsylvania Press) was selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title in 2006. She is the author of Swindler Sachem: The Nipmuc Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, and Conned the King of England (2018, Yale University Press). She has written several articles and book chapters, including "Defending and Defrauding the Indians: John Wompas, Legal Hybridity, and the Sale of Indian Land" (2018).

Pulsipher and her husband and children live in Salt Lake City, Utah.