About the BGC

Ph.D. History, Harvard University
M.A. History, Harvard University
B.A. History & Literature, Harvard University

I am working on a new book-length project, Envisioning Nineteenth-Century: New York as Cultural Capital, 1884-1880, a study of how a new middle class culture took shape centered around the domestic interior.  I focus on five key urban manufacturers who promoted the cultural ascendency of New York in the nineteenth century, including makers of lithographs, stereoviews, illustrated newspapers, popular sculpture, and parlor furniture.

Selected Recent Publications: 

• The New Nation of Goods: Artisans, Consumers, and Commodities in Early America, 1790–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2010. Fred Kniffen Book Prize of the Pioneer America Society: Association for the Preservation of Artifacts and Landscapes.
• Visual editor, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, two volumes, Third Edition (New York: Bedford Books, 2007).
• “Rogers Groups in the Home,” John Rogers: American Stories ed. Kimberly Orcutt (New York: New-York Historical Society, 2010), 167-180.
• “Broadway on a Rainy Day,” Common-Place: The Interactive Journal of Early American Life 10 (July 2010).
• “Sideboards, Side Chairs, and Globes: Changing Modes of Furnishing Provincial Culture in the Early Republic, 1790-1820,” in Furnishing the Eighteenth-Century, eds., Dena Goodman  and Kate Norberg (New York: Routledge, 2007), 79-96.
• Curator, Visualizing Nineteenth-Century New York. BGC-NYPL Student Digital Exhibition. 2010-11.

Read an interview with Professor Jaffee.