Dr. Helen Sheumaker
Teaching Professor
Room 272 Upham Hall
Oxford, OH 45056
Education
- PhD, University of Kansas
- MA, University of Kansas
- BA, University of Kansas
Teaching and Research Interests
- Material Culture Methods and Theory
- Public History
- US 19th century Cultural History
- History of Consumerism
- American Studies
Courses Recently Taught
- HST 112 Survey in U.S. History 1977 - present
- AMS/HST 216 Introduction to Public History
- AMS/HST 304 History, Memory and Tradition
- AMS/HST 435/535 Public History Practicum
Selected Publications
"Home and Family," in A Cultural History of Shopping in the Modern Age, Bloomsbury, 2022
Artifacts from Modern America, Greenwood, 2017
"All Downhill from Here: Teaching with Drunk History," Perspectives on Teaching: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association, October 2015
"Secondhand Learning: Using Secondhand Consumerism in the Classroom" in Shopping: Material Culture Perspectives, Deborah Andrews, ed., University of Delaware Press, 2014
"True Collector: The Collecting Narrative of Alice Van Leer Carrick," Journal of the History of Collections 24:3, November 2012
Editor, Memory Matters: Proceedings from the 2010 Conference Hosted by the Humanities Center, Miami University of Ohio, SUNY Press, 2011
Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hair Work, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007
Material Culture in America: Understanding Everyday Life. An encyclopedia of 180+ entries. Co-edited with Shirley Wajda, ABC-CLIO Press, 2007
Artifacts from Modern America, Greenwood Press, 2017. Listed as a top-10 2018 reference book by the American Library Association's Booklist.
Work in Progress
Dr. Sheumaker regularly collaborates with the staff at Miami University archives, creating public-facing local and campus history projects. She is collaborating with Miami University Archives and Special Collections Archives to create a new digitized collection, "Race at Miami University," as part of a larger multi-year project and she has developed a continuing student-collaborative database of Miami University students before 1864, to aid research in the history of students from the South and North before the Civil War. Her research focuses on 19th- and early-20th century material culture.