Jocelyn Wills specializes in American economic, social, and urban history. Her research interests include American mobility as reality and myth, lower-middle-class strivers, failure and American culture, entrepreneurial networks and the innovation process, and the social history of global tourism. She is completing two book manuscripts--one on the social networks created by part-time economic strivers in the 19th-century United States; the other devoted to remote sensing, government contracts, and the incubation of surveillance communities during the last quarter of the 20th century. Her current research focuses upon white-collar workers and petite storefront operators in Brooklyn, New York, between 1865 and 1930. She teaches courses in American economic and social history, American Studies, comparative industrialization, Women's Studies, and the histories of American work and play & dreams versus realities. Professor Wills received her B.A. from the University of British Columbia and her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.
Selected publications:
Boosters, Hustlers, and Speculators: Entrepreneurial Culture and the Rise of Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1849-1883 (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005)
"Respectable Mediocrity: The Everyday Life of an Ordinary American Striver, 1876-1890," Journal of Social History 37 (Winter 2003) |
