Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

About

Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara, 2009; B.A. University of Virginia, 2003) is a Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago where she teaches courses in twentieth-century United States history, with an emphasis on in the fields of capitalism, business, labor, political ideas and ideologies, regional development, and urbanization. She has held research fellowships across the US and around the world, including at Cambridge University, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Shermer has written extensively on twentieth-century U.S. political and urban history.  Her most recent book is Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt. She is also the author of Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), editor of Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape (University of Arizona Press, 2013), and co-editor, with Nelson Lichtenstein, of The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of American History, American Historical Association Perspectives, Bloomberg News, Huffington Post, History News Network, and the Washington Post.  Her article “General Motors vs. General Electric,” November 26, 2012, History News Network, was recently named an “Editor’s Pick” for 2012.

Shermer was previously the assistant director at the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2005 to 2009.  She was also the Paul Mellon Fellow of American History at the University of Cambridge from 2010 to 2012 where she taught graduate-level American history courses and lectured in the US history survey. Shermer was the recipient of the 2011 Lancaster Dissertation Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the runner-up for the 2011 Council of Graduate Schools/UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Arts and Humanities.  She was the student Commencement Speaker at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2009.

Shermer currently serves as co-editor of the book series “American Business, Politics, and Society” at the University of Pennsylvania Press which explores the relationship between governmental institutions and the creation and performance of markets, firms, and industries. She is a contributing editor to Labor: Studies in Working-Class History and a Scholar-in-Residence at the Newberry Library, where she co-organizes the seminars for labor history and the history of capitalism.

Research Interests

Modern United States, capitalism, urban history, politics and public policy, labor and working-class history

Courses Taught

• HIST 461: 20^th Century America
• HIST 212: U.S. Since 1865
• HONORS: History of Recent Events (2012 Election)

Selected Publications

Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (Cambridge Harvard University Press, Belknap Press Imprint, 2021)

Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).

Barry Goldwater and the Remaking of the American Political Landscape, ed.(University of Arizona Press, 2013).

The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination, ed. with Nelson Lichtenstein (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

“Banking on Government” in Steven Conn (ed.), To Promote the General Welfare: The Case for Big Government (Oxford University Press, 2012).       

 “‘Take Government Out of Business by Putting Business into Government:’ Local Boosters, National CEOs, Experts, and the Internal Dynamics of Mid-Century Capital Mobility,” in Julian Zelizer and Kim Phillips-Fein (eds.), Business and Politics in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2012).

“Origins of the Conservative Ascendancy: Barry Goldwater’s Early Senate Career and the De-legitimization of Organized Labor,”Journal of American History 95 (December 2008), 678-709.