Laura Rigal retired as an Associate Professor in the Department of English and in the American Studies program at The University of Iowa. She taught courses in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature and culture that emphasize the intersection of nation-building and imperial expansion; the culture of American federalism; the history and culture of industrialization; the relationship between visual and textual structures of representation; and native American cultural history of the eighteenth century. Her book on the early industrial culture of federalist America, The American Manufactory: Art, Labor, and the World of Things in the Early Republic was published in 1998 by Princeton University Press. Her other articles and book reviews may be found in recent issues of Theater Journal, The Huntington Quarterly, the William and Mary Quarterly and in American Iconology: New Approaches to Nineteenth Century Art and Literature, ed. David Miller.