Sheila L. Skemp is the Clare Leslie Marquette Chair in American history at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of William Franklin: Son of a Patriot, Servant of a King (1990) and First Lady of Letters: Judith Sargent Murray and the Struggle for the Rights of Women (2009). Skemp is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, and in 2009 she received the campus-wide Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Scholarship.