Ellen Noonan

New York University, PhD 2002

Public history; history education; African-American history; cultural history; digital humanities

Ellen has spent nearly two decades working as a historian, media producer, and instructional designer. She has taught in NYU’s Archives and Public History Program since 2011. At the American Social History Project, she created and led numerous professional development and curriculum development programs serving social studies teachers in the New York City public schools. She has also led and contributed to the development of several public history and history education websites, including the award-winning online interactive game series Mission US. Ellen is the author of The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess (University of North Carolina, 2012), which examines the opera’s long history of invention and reinvention as a barometer of twentieth-century American expectations about race, culture, and the struggle for equality.

The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America’s Most Famous Opera

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012

George C. Rogers, Jr. prize for best book on South Carolina History, South Carolina Historical Society
Supervising Editor. Who Built America: Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society. 3rd edition.

Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007