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About Me

I am a public historian and current PhD student in US History and Public History at Loyola University Chicago. I hold a BA from Columbia University in American Studies and History, and an MA in Public History and US History from Loyola University Chicago. My dissertation explores women in the temperance movement and what their advocacy for prohibition and women’s empowerment can tell us about gender, race, and party politics in the 1880s and 1890s. Specifically, I study the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its efforts to become the first truly national women’s reform organization in the decades after the American Civil War.

My current public history work focuses on making women’s history visible. I am developing an online exhibition for the Frances Willard House Museum in Evanston, IL on the public confrontation between WCTU president Frances Willard and journalist and activist Ida B. Wells over the issue of lynching. The exhibit also explores how issues of racism continue to reverberate within women’s movements. As Amy Dykeman Fellow at the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites, I am also working on the National Votes for Women Trail project, which aims to map suffrage history sites across the United States.

In the past I have worked on public programs for the Newberry Library; on suffrage history research for the Evanston History Center; as an architectural boat tour guide for Wendella Boats, and as a program assistant for the Social Science Research Council’s Digital Culture program. I expect to complete my PhD in 2020.

Recent Publications

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@ellafwagner

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

North America, United States

Expertise by Chronology

5, 8

Expertise by Topic

Gender, Libraries & Archives, Material Culture, Museums, Politics, Public History, Race, Sexual Violence, Women