Department Faculty

"Today I would probably be called a 20th century US cultural historian with a focus on consumption, childhood, and leisure issues.  But, as a historian trained in modern French and German history and with experience in British and Australian libraries and universities, I have also done comparative history on work, political economy, time, and leisure.  I have an on-going interest in the modern history of western technology and co-authored a text on the subject. My abiding theme is the origins, uses, meanings, and consequences of 20th century affluence with books likeTime and Money: The Making of Consumer Culture, Kids Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood, An All-Consuming Century, The Cute and the Cool, and The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the 20th Century. I am currently working on two projects, a book about packaged pleasures, the engineering of sensual intensity around 1900, and second book about the decline of markers of male maturity in American culture since 1950.  I try to reach audiences beyond the academy and encourage students to ask probing questions about the present that can be explained by the past."