Amy Froide, Associate Professor, History
Amy Froide instills in her students the excitement of historical discovery through her innovative courses focused on early-modern Europe. The learning environment Froide provides by engaging her students with complex lessons of interdisciplinary history epitomizes the distinctive undergraduate experience to which UMBC aspires.
Her students write Wikipedia articles on medieval women, create “common place books” in the style of early-modern women, and compose contemporary op-eds. In the last three years alone, Froide has taught seven distinct courses, chaired the committees of five master’s students and one Ph.D. student, and served on six additional graduate student committees. Her M.A. students have gone on to competitive Ph.D. programs and won prestigious awards. Recently, a former student assumed her first faculty position. Froide also mentors faculty across departments and colleges at UMBC and has affiliate faculty appointments with the gender and women’s studies department and the language, literacy, and culture graduate program.
Froide was the founding director of the interdisciplinary minor in entrepreneurship and innovation, and the course she developed covering early-modern entrepreneurs (which includes pirates, conquistadors, missionaries, scientists, and more) consistently fills its 100 seats in just a few days. Froide’s latest book, Silent Partners: Women and Public Investors During Britain’s Financial Revolution, explores the entrepreneurial role women played in the world’s first financial revolution and the early development of capitalism.
Froide earned B.A. and M.A.T. degrees from University of San Diego and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University.