Isadora A. Helfgott

Associate Professor of History

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Isadora A. Helfgott received her A.M. and Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, and her B.A. in History with a minor in Art History from Swarthmore College where she graduated with Highest Honors.  Before coming to the University of Wyoming in 2009, she taught at Georgetown University and the University of Toronto.  She is as an advisory and adjunct member of the Gender and Women's Studies department and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Museum Studies minor.

Dr. Helfgott's research focuses on American cultural history and visual culture.  She is interested in the meaning imbued in cultural display - the way that political ideology has been promoted in the distribution and consumption of cultural products.  She focuses in particular on what happens when established cultural boundaries and hierarchies are contested or in flux.  Her current project examines the relationship between fine art and popular culture in the United States during the turbulent decades of the 1930s and 1940s.  It analyzes the efforts of Leftist artists, museums, the federal government and corporations to expand the size and scope of the audience for art in America and explores the struggles among these groups over the meaning of fine art in American society. 

Dr. Helfgott is also the Vice Provost of Global Engagement (click here for more information.)

 

Research Interests

20th-century U.S., American and Transnational Cultural History, U.S. Women and Gender, Radicalism and Social Movements, Visual Culture

 

Courses taught

Historical Methods

U.S. Since 1865

Social History of American Women

Topics: American Cultural History

Topics: Consumer Society in America

Topics: America in the 1930s

Graduate seminar: American Cultural History

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CONTACT:    History Building    Room 162 & 356    307-766-5159    ihelfgot@uwyo.edu

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