Dr. Jessamyn Neuhaus
Professor of History (serving up pop culture!)
Who studies, analyzes, and historicizes U.S. popular culture? Why, people who love pop culture of course! I am an avid popular media consumer, but I am also a historian and a scholar: I believe that studying popular culture is an essential part of understanding the past and understanding our contemporary society. Knowing how to critique popular culture makes all of us more knowledgeable participants in U.S. politics, education, the marketplace, and home life. I’ve published two monographs: Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) and, Housework and Housewives in Modern American Advertising: Married to the Mop (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011). My next book, Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers is forthcoming from West Virginia University Press. My next project will be a collection of personal essays about identity, history, and the power of popular culture.
My most important task as a college instructor is to create a classroom environment where students can learn to take their own ideas seriously. I respect students’ ability to create knowledge and to effectively bring their own experiences and questions to bear on the study of history. I love my work as a teacher and a scholar, and I hope to impart to all my students, no matter what their future career or professional goals, a sense of how truly rewarding and beneficial academic study and intellectual growth can be.
Education
- M.A./Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University, 2001. Specialization: Twentieth Century U.S. History and Cultural Studies
- B.A., The College of Wooster. Specialization: Religious Studies
Teaching Areas
- United States civilization, 1877 to the present
- Gender, race, ethnicity, and popular culture
- United States youth culture
- Religion and popular culture
Research Areas
- U.S. popular culture
- Gender studies
- Pedagogy
Recent Publications
- “Cooking at Home: The Cultural Construction of American ’Home Cooking’ in Popular Discourse,” in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Popular Culture, edited by Kathleen LeBesco and Peter Naccarato (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
- “Can we counteract the September 11 conspiracy meme? An argument for using the documentary 9/11 in the American survey.” Teaching History: A Journal of Methods 41, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 3-10.
- Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, forthcoming).
Honors
-
SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2013