Susan V. Spellman
Education
- PhD 2009, Carnegie Mellon University
- MA, Miami University
- 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.
- Cornering the Market: Independent Grocers and Innovation in American Small Business, 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