Lizabeth Cohen

Lizabeth Cohen is the Howard Mumford Jones Professor American Studies and currently Chair of the History Department of Harvard University.  She is the author of Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (1990, new edition with new introduction 2008), winner of the Bancroft Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer, and A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (2003).  She is also the co-author, with David Kennedy, of a college-level U.S. History textbook, The American Pageant (1998, 2002, 2006, 2010).  Her interests have focused on integrating social, cultural, and political history in the twentieth century, probing how people’s social and cultural experiences and identities shaped their political orientations.  In her current research, she is exploring the rebuilding of American cities after World War II by investigating the life and career of a major figure in urban renewal, Edward J. Logue, who worked in New Haven in the 1950s, Boston in the 1960s, and New York City and State from 1968-1985.  During academic year 2007-8 she was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University, and over the years she has received fellowship support from the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Her current research is supported by grants from the Real Estate Academic Initiative, the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston, all of Harvard University.

Selected Publications

• A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (2003, 2004)
• The American Pageant co-author (1998, 2002, 2006)
• Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (1990)

Contact information: Lizabeth Cohen, History Department