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Susan V. Spellman

Education

• PhD 2009, Carnegie Mellon University
• MA, ºÚÁÏÉçÇø
• BA, Kent State University

Teaching and Research Interests

• 19th and 20th C. U.S. social and cultural
• History of Capitalism
• Consumerism
• History of technology

Work in Progress

Dr. Spellman's work intersects the history of capitalism, in addition to social, cultural, consumer, and technology history.  Her book, Cornering the Market: Independent Grocers and Innovation in American Small Business, 1860-1940 (Oxford University Press), considers the ways in which small grocers--often portrayed as holdovers from a nostalgic past--were key agents of a "modernizing" impulse in American capitalism from the Civil War era to the New Deal.  She has begun work on a second book project, Go-Getters! Ambition and the American Business Traveler, from the Steamboat to the Frequent Flyer.

Courses Taught

• HST 111 Survey of U.S History
• HST 112 Survey of U.S. History
• HST 206 Introduction to Historical Inquiry
• HST 279 U.S. Consumerism, 1890-Present
• HST 290 American Business History

Selected Publications

• "Where are the Managers? Reevaluating Large-Scale US Retail Systems and their Coordinators," History of Retailing and Consumption, November 2017.
• , Oxford University Press, 2016.
• "Trust Brokers: Traveling Grocery Salesmen and Confidence in Nineteenth-Century Trade," Enterprise & Society, June 2012.
• "All the Comforts of Home: The Domestication of the Service Station Industry, 1920-1940," Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 37, no. 3, 2004
• Associate Editor (with Allan Winkler), Encyclopedia of American History, Postwar 1946-1968, Vol. 9, under the general editorship of Gary B. Nash, Facts on File, Inc., 2003

Selected Grants and Awards

• J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship, American Historical Association and the Library of Congress, 2012
• Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellowship, National Museum of American History, 2007
• Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Traveling Fellowship in Business History, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 2006
• Russel B. Nye Award for Best Article published in Journal of Popular Culture, 2005