Courses Taught:
HIST 214: Shaping of the Modern World
HIST 309: U.S.: Colonies to the Civil War
HIST 310: U.S.: Civil War to the Present
HIST 341: Reconstruction to the Progressive Era
HIST 346: America from the Roaring Twenties to World War II
HIST 450: U.S.: History of New York City
HIST 455: Women in American History
INTG 333: Contemporary History Through Film

Research Interests:
History of class
Radicalism
Gender
Consumption
Women in America

Favorite Links
Organization of American Historians
Columbia Journal of American Studies
History News Network
H-NET: Humanities and Social Sciences Online
Labor and Working Class History Association

Recent publications

For All White-Collar Workers: The Possibilities of Radicalism in New York City's Department Store Unions, 1934-53 (Ohio State University Press, 2007)

“Monkey Business in Union Square: A Cultural Analysis of the Klein’s-Ohrbach’s Strikes of 1934-5,” Journal of Social History (Fall 2002)

“On The Popular Front: New York City’s Department Store Union Culture, 1937-1941,” Mickle Street Review: An Electronic Journal of Whitman and American Studies (November 2004)

“Between the ‘Other’ Classes: The Nanny and the Ideological Creation of the American Middle Class,” Cercles 8 (2003): 68-77, at http://www.cercles.com/n8/opler.pdf

Selected Book Reviews

“Race, Class and Teachers’ Unions,” review of Jerald E. Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis, and Steve Golin, Hopes on the Line: The Newark Teachers Strikes, in Radical Teacher 71 (2004): 4-7

Davis Joyce, Howard Zinn: A Radical American Vision, in Cercles (July 2004)
Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner, Blacklisted: The Film Lover’s Guide to the Hollywood Blacklist, in Cercles (January 2004)

Judith Nies, Nine Women: Portraits from the American Radical Tradition, in Cercles (February 2004)

Jedediah Purdy, Being America: Liberty, Violence, and Commerce in an American World, in Cercles (October 2003)

Peter Stoneley, Consumerism and American Girls’ Literature, 1860-1940, in Cercles (May 2003)

Selected Conference Presentations

“Counter Revolution: Anti-Communism, Labor, and the Rise of Self-Service in New York City, 1948-1953,” “The Self-Service Revolution in Retailing” Panel, Business History Conference Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON, June 2006.

“Creating A Cultural Front: Labor and Radical Cultures in New York City’s Department Store Unions, 1934-41,” “Culture, Activism, and Power: Social Reform and Strategies for Change” Panel, American Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, November 2004.

Comment, “Exclusions and Inclusions: Constructing/Confronting Cultural Violence in the Plantation Fiction of Postbellum America” Panel, American Studies Association Annual Conference, Hartford, CT, October 2003.

“Communism and Consumption in Union Square, 1930-35,” “Site of Memory and Contestation: New York City’s Union Square and American Social Movements in the Twentieth Century” Panel, History Matters Conference, New York, NY, May 2003.

 “Putting The Ax Into Working-Class Literature: Satire, Class, and Donald E. Westlake’s The Ax,” “Contemporary Working-Class Literature” Panel, American Literature Association Annual Conference, Cambridge, MA, May 2003.

“ ‘Barbara Hutton, She Gets Mutton!  Woolworth Workers, They Get Nothing!’: The Gendered Narratives of the 1937 New York City Five-and-Dime Sit-Down Strikes,” “New Voices in Labor History” panel,  North American Labor History Association Annual Conference, Detroit, MI, October 2002.