RESEARCH INTERESTS

20th-century intellectual history, the history of science, and environmental humanities

BIOGRAPHY

Isabel's teaching and research focus on 20th-century intellectual history, the history of science, and environmental humanities. Her first book project, Logics of Life in 20th-Century Liberalism: Biology, Politics, and Critique,  tracks the role of biology in the emergence of poststructuralism and liberal historicism in France after the Second World War. She is also at work on a second book, tentatively entitled At the Edges of Chaos: Complexity Theory between Science and Governance. Bringing together histories of molecular biology, cybernetics, and big data, the project explores the rise of complexity science in Europe and the United States after 1970. 

Isabel’s publications have appeared in journals including History of the Human Sciences and Revue d’histoire des sciences. Prior to joining the Department of History, Isabel held postdoctoral positions at​the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine, the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge (both at UChicago) and the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy.  She received her PhD in History from Columbia University in 2015.

COURSES TAUGHT

• Global Environmental Humanities
• Science, Governance, and the Crisis of Liberalism
• Biology, Technology, and Politics in 20th-Century Europe
• Gaming History (with Katherine Buse and Brad Bolman) 

OFFICE HOURS

FIELD SPECIALTIES

Greater Latin America; Modern Mexico; Indigenous politics; environmental history; economic development; history and politics of social science; race in the Americas

BIOGRAPHY

Diana Schwartz Francisco's research and teaching focus on Indigenous politics, the nexus between economic development and environmental change in Latin America, the history and politics of social science, and race in the Americas.

Her book manuscript in progress, tentatively titled “The Dam’s Wake: Development, Indigenous Politics, and Anthropology in the Mexican Tropics,” is a history of the links between Indigenous politics and environmental  change in twentieth-century Mexico. Many scholars have shown how, during the mid-twentieth century, the Mexican State used a combination of co-optation and coercion to both integrate rural and Indigenous citizens and carry out top-down regional development projects. Building on this literature, yet unsatisfied by its treatment of Indigenous identity as static and often divorced from the politics of ecological transformations, the book focuses on the ways development-induced displacement and Indigenous identity are entwined. Centering on the displacement of some 20,000 Indigenous residents of the Papaloapan River Basin for the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam in the 1950s, the book argues that displacement led relocated citizens and scientists alike to refashion and marshal Indigenous alterity as not merely an ethnic denotation but as a political identity to make demands vis-à-vis the Mexican State.

She earned her PhD in History from the University of Chicago (2016), her MA in Latin American Studies from UCLA, and BA in Ethnic Studies and Political Science from UC San Diego. Prior to coming to CLAS, she was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Latin American Studies at Wesleyan University (2016-18) and a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Valparaiso University (2018-19). In Chicago, she has taught the Spanish language history course for the Odyssey Project (Proyecto Odisea), a college-credit humanities program for low-income adults. Before commencing graduate school, she worked for a Mexican non-profit that provided support for youth street workers.

PUBLICATIONS

“Displacement, Development, and the Creation of a Modern Indígena in the Papaloapan, 1940s–1970s,” in Ariadna Acevedo & Paula López Caballero, eds. Beyond Alterity: Destabilizing the Indigenous Other in Mexico. University of Arizona Press, 2018.

“Indigenous Policy in Twentieth-Century Latin America.” Latin American Perspectives 39 (September 2012): 111–116.

PhD'16 University of California, Berkeley
AB'09 Pomona College

FIELD SPECIALTIES

Modern US history; histories of women, gender, and feminism

BIOGRAPHY

Peggy teaches and writes on feminism, women's movements, and motherhood in American and European history. Her first book, WITHOUT CHILDREN: The Long History of Not Being a Mother (Seal Press, 2023), explores the history of non-motherhood in light of falling fertility and rising rates of childlessness today, in the US and globally. Her current research centers on the late 20th century revival of midwifery in the United States and the place birth has occupied in American religion, politics, and culture--and on Instagram. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and she regularly appears on television, radio, podcasts, and at corporate events. Peggy received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to her teaching and writing, Peggy works with the Chair of Undergraduate Studies to oversee undergraduate advising, events, and curriculum in the Department of History.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother (Seal Press, 2023).

"Why Women Not Having Kids Became a Panic," New York Times, May 6, 2023.
 

PhD 2017 (history) University of Pennsylvania
AM 2009 (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies) Columbia University

RESEARCH INTERESTS

African history; Middle Eastern history; imperialism; global nineteenth century; history of death; African diaspora; race and slavery; visual and material culture

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. K.J. Hickerson (she/her) is cultural and political historian of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Nile Valley. Her research stands at the nexus between African history, the study of the African diaspora in the Middle East, and the study of imperialism. Dr. Hickerson’s book manuscript-in-progress, Mortal Struggles: Death and Empire in the Nile Valley, examines cultural practices surrounding death in Sudan throughout the era of Ottoman-Egyptian colonialism, the independent state known as the Mahdiyya, and the early years of the co-dominion of Sudan by Egypt and Great Britain. Her other research and writings address the politics of photography, art, fashion, and medicine in the Nile Valley and beyond.

Before coming to UChicago, Dr. Hickerson was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the Sir William Luce Fellow at Durham University and has received fellowships and grants from the Huntington Library, the Boston Athenæum, the British Academy, the African Studies Association, among others and her writings have appeared in Durham Middle East Papers, Journal of Northeast African Studies; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition; and the Sudan Studies Bulletin.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My primary research projects have focused on the intersections of women, labor, and capitalism in South Korea and a comparative analysis of Cold War-era popular culture, gender, and society in East Asian countries. Currently, I am writing a book manuscript, entitled "Reimagining Cold War Domesticity: South Korean (De)Housewifization, Family Economy, and Consumer Capitalism," about the economic and cultural history of postwar South Korean domesticity, which considers how the transnational gendering processes of domesticity shaped to naturalize and produce derivatives in relation to class stratification, state, culture, and economy. I want my research to reframe Cold War-era historical narratives by focusing on women's labor and the family unit, demystifying the hegemonic place the U.S. occupies within Korean and East Asian history during the Cold War. The second book project will expand my research interests in gender history into transnational, cultural, and economic dimensions and investigate women's work in the private education industry in Korean diaspora communities in the U.S. and other Asian countries.

BIOGRAPHY

Since earning my Ph.D. in modern Korean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have taught various courses related to Korea and Asia, addressing history, gender, culture, society, and politics at CSU-Chico, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania, Seoul National University, and Soongsil University. Before joining the University of Chicago, I finished a postdoctoral fellowship at the Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University. I worked as an HK research professor at the Institute for the Study of Korean Modernity at Yonsei University in South Korea.