Professional Affiliation

Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park

Expert Bio

My research interests to date have focused on the intersections between metropolitan change, public policy, and popular ideas about race and inequality in the 20th century United States. In particular, my work has focused on whites' changing assumptions about racial identity (both their own and that of other, "non-white" people) and how these ideas have been shaped by institutional reform and changes in the metropolitan built environment. My first book, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (University of Chicago Press, 2007) explores this relationship by linking two stories: the national history of 20th century land use politics, centered on the federal government's role in fueling suburban growth and segregation, and a case study of white exclusionary politics in suburban Detroit. My long-standing interest in the intersection of cultural history and political economy has led me to a new book project, which examines economic growth and popular narratives about inequality from the 1930s until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.I also continue to write and teach about cities and suburbs, and am currently preparing a primary source reader in metropolitan history for Wiley-Blackwell's "Uncovering the Past" series. For many years I have contributed to a range of public history and policy/legal projects, including California Newsreel's Race: The Power of an Illusion, the CERD Working Group on Housing Segregation and Discrimination in the U.S., and "Arsenal of Exclusion/Inclusion: The American Way of Living," an exhibit at the 2009 International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam.I was born and raised in a suburb of Los Angeles that subsequently rebranded itself to promote real estate development. After living for nearly two decades in Michigan, New York, and New Jersey, I now call Silver Spring, Maryland home.

 

Education

B.A. (1987) with honors (in History), University of California, Berkeley; M.A. (1991) European History, Columbia University; Ph.D.(1999) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

 

Experience

• Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park, 2007-present
• Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Rutgers University, Newark, 2003, 2005-2007
• Lecturer, Department of History and Writing Program, Princeton University, 1998-2005

 

 

Expertise

 

 

20th Century United States; metropolitan change, public policy, racial politics, growth politics, inequality

Wilson Center Project

"The Myth of the Free Market: Policy, Growth, and Inequality in Modern America"

Project Summary

This study examines the impact of public policy on economic growth, inequality, and the politics of opportunity from the 1930s until 1980, with a focus on the federal government's role in transforming—essentially subsidizing—markets for debt. It demonstrates how Depression-era and post-war state interventions in banking, credit markets, and the money supply not only facilitated growth but also helped ensure that its benefits would be distributed unequally by race, gender, socioeconomic status, and region. Meanwhile it traces how policy makers, economists, and businesspeople came to view and make sense of the state's fast-growing presence and influence; throughout these decades, both public leadership and private sector elites saw the new federal role not as a force that altered or manipulated market forces but rather as one that "unleashed" the market's natural potential. The study helps explain how, by the time of the neoliberal ascendancy and the "Reagan revolution," dominant renderings of America's post-war affluence largely ignored the decisive role of public policy and federal subsidy in favor of the narrative that affluence and poverty alike were determined solely by free market forces. Since the 1980s, this narrative has had an enduring influence on debates and public policy battles over the federal role in shaping economic development and opportunity.

Major Publications

• Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (University of Chicago Press, Historical Studies of Urban America, 2007).
• "Marketing the Free Market: The Politics of Prosperity in Metropolitan America," in Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds., The New Suburban History (University of Chicago Press, Historical Studies of Urban America, 2006).
• "‘Democracy's Unfinished Business': Federal Policy and the Search for Fair Housing, 1961-1968." Report for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, Washington, D.C., June, 2004, excerpted in Poverty and Race 13 (3), May/June, 2004, reprinted in Poverty and Race in America: The Emerging Agendas, Chester Hartman, ed. (Lexington, 2006).