Participant Info

First Name
Ella
Last Name
Wagner
Country
United States
State
20
Affiliation
National Park Service
Website URL
www.ellafwagner.com
Keywords
public history, temperance, suffrage, women's suffrage, women's history, social movements, race, gender
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a public historian currently employed at the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education at the National Park Service. I hold a PhD in US History and Public History from Loyola University Chicago (2022) and a BA from Columbia University in American Studies and History (2013). My academic research 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. Since 2020, I have worked as a historian with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education at the National Park Service, creating digital content for NPS.gov focused on women’s history. In 2018 and 2019, I developed 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 also worked 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 programs. I live in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Recent Publications
Media Coverage
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