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Helen Sheumaker

Education

• PhD, University of Kansas
• MA, University of Kansas
• BA, University of Kansas

Teaching and Research Interests

• Material Culture Methods and Theory
• Public History
• US 19th century Cultural History
• History of Consumerism
• American Studies

Work in Progress

Dr. Sheumaker regularly collaborates with the staff at ºÚÁÏÉçÇø archives, creating public-facing local and campus history projects. She is collaborating with ºÚÁÏÉçÇø Archives and Special Collections Archives to create a new digitized collection, "Race at ºÚÁÏÉçÇø," as part of a larger multi-year project and she has developed a continuing ºÚÁÏÉçÇø-collaborative database of ºÚÁÏÉçÇø ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs before 1864, to aid research in the history of ºÚÁÏÉçÇøs from the South and North before the Civil War. Her research focuses on 19th- and early-20th-century material culture.

Courses Taught

• HST 112 Survey in U.S. History 1977 - present
• AMS/HST 216 Introduction to Public History
• AMS/HST 304 History, Memory and Tradition
• AMS/HST 435/535 Public History Practicum

Selected Publications

• "Home and Family," in A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age, Bloomsbury, 2022
• , Greenwood, 2017
• "All Downhill from Here: Teaching with Drunk History," Perspectives on Teaching: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association, October 2015
• "Secondhand Learning: Using Secondhand Consumerism in the Classroom" in Shopping: Material Culture Perspectives, Deborah Andrews, ed., University of Delaware Press, 2014
• "True Collector: The Collecting Narrative of Alice Van Leer Carrick," Journal of the History of Collections 24:3, November 2012
• Editor, Memory Matters: Proceedings from the 2010 Conference Hosted by the Humanities Center, ºÚÁÏÉçÇø of Ohio, SUNY Press, 2011
• Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hair Work, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007
• Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life.  An encyclopedia of 180+ entries.  Co-edited with Shirley Wajda, ABC-CLIO Press, 2007
• Artifacts from Modern America, Greenwood Press, 2017.  Listed as a top-10 2018 reference book by the American Library Association's Booklist.

Back to Directories

• Department of Global and Intercultural Studies
• Department of History