About

My teaching and research interests include the history of consumer culture, material culture, visual culture, secondary economies, and capitalism, particularly in 19th-century America, and I am especially interested in better understanding the lives of ordinary people and ordinary things. I have written on subjects as wide-ranging as the history of child criminals, free give-aways, representations of time in visual imagery, and men’s toupees.

My most recent monograph is Under the Rug: The (Not So) Hidden History of Men’s Hairpieces, which will be out in the spring of 2027. It explores the subjects of masculinity, aging, pretense, and the problem of baldness by looking at the surprisingly deep history of men’s wigs, toupees, and false mustaches. My third book, Crap. A History of Cheap Stuff in America (Chicago, 2020), was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in Criticism, and a finalist for the Hagley Prize for best book in business history. It has been translated into Korean and Chinese. I also wrote In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence through the Great Depression (Chicago, 2009), and Refined Tastes: Sugar, Consumers, and Confectionery in 19th-Century America (Johns Hopkins, 2002). I am co-editor of Commercial Intimacy: Affinity and the Marketplace (Penn Press, 2025); and Capitalism by Gaslight: Illuminating the Economy of 19th-Century America (2015).

My current project is on the history of novelty and consumer culture.

I am also an artist, with an MFA in printmaking, who has taught studio art courses in silkscreen, etching, and non-traditional printmaking techniques.