LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ -- Dr. Susan E. Klepp of Philadelphia, PA, professor of history at Rider University, is on paid research leave for the 1998 fall semester to complete work on the edited, annotated diary of Hannah Callender Sansom to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She is collaborating with Karin Wulf of American University.

Sansom's diary, one of the earliest and most complete women's diaries of the colonial and early national period, was kept between 1758 and 1788 and reflects life in the Philadelphia and Burlington, NJ, areas. Until recently it was in private hands.

In addition to the diary, the finished manuscript will include an introduction and interpretive chapters covering Philadelphia's social and economic structure, 18th-century aesthetics, Quaker theology, women's status, courtship, marriage, household, family; politics, and intellectual issues.

One of Sansom's quilts, dated 1761, has also survived, allowing the linking of personal narrative in the forthcoming publication with an important personal artifact for the first time in colonial women's history.

Her work "Revolutionary Bodies: Women and the Fertility Transition in the Mid-Atlantic, 1760-1830" is due for publication in Journal of American History in December. Earlier this year she completed "The Physical Experience of Northern Slavery" for Trent House in Trenton, NJ, and "Rough Music and Women in the Revolution" for the David Library of the American Revolution in Washington Crossing, PA.

She created the Pennsylvania Historical Association's first committee on women and minorities in 1995 and has served as organizer or chair for numerous conferences. At Rider her accomplishments include several scholarly presentations on history, including its impact on women and other minorities, to student, faculty, and outside groups.

Dr. Klepp received her Ph.D. in American civilization in 1980 and her M.A. in American civilization in 1967 from the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the faculty at Rider as an adjunct instructor of history in 1975 and has been a member of the woman's studies program since 1977.

She has been president of the Pennsylvania Historical Association since 1997 and is a member of the McNeil Center's executive, fellowship and search committees. In 1997-1998, she was appointed to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission's Committee on Historical Markers.

Rider University is an independent, coeducational, nonsectarian institution with a 353-acre main campus in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and a 23-acre campus in Princeton, New Jersey. The University offers 58 undergraduate programs and 17 graduate programs in the Colleges of Business Administration; Liberal Arts, Education, and Sciences; Continuing Studies; and Westminster Choir College. Ninety-three percent of the faculty hold doctoral or other appropriate advanced degrees.