From The Peopling of New York City
Jocelyn Wills
Associate Professor
History Department &
Center for Worker Education
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
525s Whitehead Hall
718-951-5000 x2812
Fax: 718-951-4504
Email: jwills brooklyn.cuny.edu
A Canadian by birth, I zig-zagged my way to New York from Vancouver, B.C., via Texas, Minnesota, and the many dotted roads that connect the contiguous United States with Canada and Mexico. Along the way, I encountered both diversity as well as widening disparities. As a result, my research interests expanded to include American mobility as reality and myth, failure and American culture, lower-middle-class strivers, social capital and entrepreneurial networks, and the histories of capitalism, global workers, and tourism.
I am currently completing two book manuscripts: one on the setbacks experienced and networks created by 19th-century economic and social climbers; the other on the military-industrial-academic complex and the expansion of global surveillance. My current research focuses on American boom-and-bust, and the everyday experiences of workers, consumers, and petite-storefront operators in Brooklyn between 1865 and the 1930s.
Education:
Doctor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station - 1998 (History)
B.A., University of British Columbia, Vancouver - 1989 (History)
Areas of Expertise:
American economic, social, and urban history.
At Brooklyn College, I teach courses on the histories of American and global capitalism, American work & play, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, comparative industrialization, Brooklyn history, and the peopling of New York City.
I also participate in the American and Women's Studies programs, offering inter-disciplinary classes centered on the dreams, myths, and realities that shape American identities.
Books and Publications:
Wills, Jocelyn. "Struggling Upward Without Luke Larkin's Luck: Re-Examining Mobility in Post-Civil War Brooklyn." Markets in Time and Place: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Capitalism and Power (forthcoming). (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2009
Wills, Jocelyn. Boosters, Hustlers, and Speculators: Entrepreneurial Culture and the Rise of Minneapolis and St. Paul, 1849-1883. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005. (Books and Publications: Book) 2005
Wills, Jocelyn. "Respectable Mediocrity: The Everyday Life of an Ordinary American Striver." Journal of Social History (Winter 2003): 323-349. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2003
Wills, Jocelyn. "Divided Loyalties: Private Ambition, Nation-Building, and the Railroad Racket Along the Northwestern Borderlands, 1877-1883." Journal of the West 39:2 (Spring 2000):8-16. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2000
Wills, Jocelyn. "Business Enterprise and the Construction of American Community Life in the Northwest: St. Paul, Minnesota, 1849-1862." Essays in Economic and Business History 15 (1997):135-53. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 1997
Creative Work:
Wills, Jocelyn, with Roch Parayre. How Blue Is Your Ocean?: Value Innovation and Credit Union Strategy Development. Madison, WI: Filene Research Institute, 2006. 2006
Wills, Jocelyn, with Samantha Howland, Franck Schuurmans, Franklin Shen, and Katrinka Smith Sloan. "The Long and Winding Road": Histories of Aging and Aging Services in America, 2006-2016. Washington, D.C.: American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, 2006. 2006
Awards, Honors and Fellowships
2006-2007, Mrs. Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute Research Fellowship. (Grants and Fellowships) 2007
2000-2004, PSC-CUNY Research Awards for American Dream & Reality research. (Grants and Fellowships) 2004
2002-2003, Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation Fellowship for outstanding teaching in the Humanities. (Grants and Fellowships) 2003
2001, Minnesota Historical Society Research Grant. (Grants and Fellowships) 2001
1993-97, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Four-Year Doctoral Fellowship; 1996-97, James J. Hill Reference Library Research Grants. (Grants and Fellowships) 1997
Research Activities:
Book-Length Manuscript In-Progress: "This Way to the Promised Land": Space Exploration, Engineering Apostles, and the Seduction of Global Surveillance. 2009
Book-Length Manuscript In-Progress: Lilacs for Leila: and Other Confessions of a Part-Time Striver. 2009
Research In-Progress: Upward, Downward, and Lateral Mobility in Everyday Brooklyn, 1865-1930. 2009
Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums:
"'By June the Affair Was a Hopeless Tangle'; and Other Tales in the Failure of Personal and Business Relationships," 55th Annual Business History Conference, Milan, Italy. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009
"'This Way to the Promised Land': Space Exploration, Engineering Apostles, and the Seduction of Global Surveillance," Surveillance Societies: What Price Security?, New York, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009
"Lilacs for Leila; And Other Confessions of a Part-Time Striver," 11th Annual Faculty Day Conference, Brooklyn College, CUNY, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008
"Recovering Ordinary New York in the Digital Age: Social Historians in the Archives," invited lecture/panel presentation, with Susan Yohn (Hofstra University) and Marci Reaven (City Lore), Pratt Institute, New York, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2007
"Struggling Upward without Luke Larkin's Luck: Re-examining Mobility in 19th-Century Brooklyn," Imaging Brooklyn Conference, Brooklyn, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007
"'Holding Their Own' & 'Making a Living': White-Collar Strivers Turned Petite-Storefront Operators in Nineteenth-Century Brooklyn, New York," 31st Annual Economic and Business Historical Society Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006
"Entering the Historical Profession in the 21st Century," invited series of lectures for graduate students, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006
"Windows of Opportunity: Storefront Businesses in Nineteenth-Century Brooklyn," invited lecture, Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2006
"Exporting Exhaustion: Eco-Tourism, Work-Weary Travelers, and the Historical Calculus of Transnational Encounters," 8th Annual Faculty Day Conference, Brooklyn College, CUNY, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2005
"Money Makes the World Go Round, the World Go Round, the World Go Round: Globalization, Social History, and the Resuscitation of Economic Linkages," Journal of Social History's "The Future of Social History Conference," Fairfax, Virginia. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004
"Networking from the Inside-Out: Socializing with 'The Boys' from the Office," 50th Annual Business History Conference, Le Creusot, France. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004
"'Pushing, Go-Ahead' New Yorkers: Researching White-Collar Strivers in Nineteenth-Century Brooklyn, " 5th Annual Researching New York Conference, Albany, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003
"John MacDonald Had a Firm: Creative Genius, Business Survival, and the Incubation of Vancouver's High-Technology Community," 28th Annual Economic and Business Historical Society Conference, Memphis, Tennessee. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003
"Lower-Middle-Class Strivers and the Boundaries of Business and Gender Success in the Gilded Age West," 25th Annual Economic and Business Historical Society Conference, San Diego, California. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2000
"Mapping the Industrial Revolution," National Science Foundation Quantitative Reasoning Project Panel, Core Studies Sampler Conference, Brooklyn College, CUNY.
(Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2000
"The 'Spending Mentality': Wage-Working Consumers in the United States and the Triumph of Industrial Capitalism, 1870-1930," 3rd Annual Faculty Day Conference, Brooklyn College, CUNY, New York.
(Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2000
"The Politics of Nineteenth-Century Entrepreneurship and Western Development," Columbia University Seminar in Political and Intellectual Institutions and Thought, New York, New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2000
"Entrepreneurial Success and the Quest for Graft and Glory: James J. Hill v. William D. Washburn," 24th Annual Economic and Business Historical Society Conference, San Antonio, Texas. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1999
"The Cultural Divide: Railroad Developments in the United States and Canada," 43rd Annual Business History Conference, Glasgow, Scotland. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1997
Professional Leadership:
Chair (2009), and Member (2008; 2010), Kerr Prize Committee, Business History Conference. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2009
Member, Local Arrangements Committee, Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, January 2009. Activities included leading a tour to the African Burial Ground National Monument; and writing "Of Monuments and Memories: New York City's Burial Sites and Cemeteries," AHA Supplement to the 123rd Annual Meeting. (Professional Leadership: Committee Service) 2009
Pedagogical Achievements:
Place-Based Education Fellow: The Borough of Brooklyn as a Community Partner in Research, Teaching, and Internship Opportunities at Brooklyn College, CUNY. 2009
Teaching American History at Brooklyn College and throughout the Borough: organized and participated in a four-day Teaching American History Summer Institute that included employing Green-Wood Cemetery, the Brooklyn Historical Society, Weeksville, and the Architectural/Historical Landmarks of Downtown Brooklyn as Sites for Researching, Teaching, and Understanding American Social History. 2008
