Professor Goan is a specialist in twentieth century US history, with specific interests in gender, Appalachia/Kentucky, and medical history.  Her first book  Mary Breckinridge: The Frontier Nursing Service and Rural Health in Appalachia (University of North Carolina Press), was published in 2008.  She is currently working on a new book that will trace the 82-year process of gaining full suffrage for Kentucky women, looking not simply at the efforts of well-known figures such as Laura Clay and Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, but also at the contributions men and women, black and white, from all corners of the state made.  Additionally, she is working closely with the Kentucky Woman Suffrage Project (see https://networks.h-net.org/node/2289/pages/91162/ kentucky-woman-suffrage-project) to help mark the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Dr. Goan focuses primarily on undergraduate teaching.  She is Director of Internships for the History Department and works to promote career readiness.