Research Interests
US 19th and 20th Century Cultural and Intellectual History, Working-class history, Histories of space and place, Comparative U.S. and South African History, Public and Digital History
Education
Ph.D. American Studies, Yale University, 1991
B.A., Sociology, University of California, Berkeley 1981
Grants
Co-investigator, Humanities Without Walls: "The Classroom and the Future of the Historical Record," with John Randolph, Principal Investigator, and Daniel Gilbert and Bonnie Mak, UIUC co-investigators, and Patrick Jones, Aaron Johnson and William Thompson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln and Sharon Leon, Michigan State University.
Co-Investigator, "THINK (The Humanities Innovating New Knowledge), Barbara Ransby, UIC and Jennifer Brier, UIC Principal Investigators, Devin Hunter, UIS, co-investigator
Courses Taught
Spring 2019: History 271: Illinois History
Fall 2019: History 172, U.S. History Since 1877
Fall 2019: History 358, History Harvest: Collaborative Public Digital History
Spring 2018: History 386: Public History
Highlighted Publications
Oberdeck, K. J. (1999). The Evangelist and the Impresario: Religion, Entertainment, and Cultural Politics in America, 1884-1914. (New Studies in American Intellectual and Cultural History). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Recent Publications
Oberdeck, K. J. (2018). Review: B. McMahon's The Ford Century in Minnesota. Business History Review, 92(01), 217-219. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680518000314
Oberdeck, K. J., & Higbie, F. T. (2012). Labour and Popular Print Culture. In C. Bold (Ed.), The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: US Popular Print Culture 1860-1920 (Vol. 6, pp. 233-252). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199234066.003.0012
Oberdeck, K. J. (2010). Competing Geographies of Welfare Capitalism and its Workers: Kohler Village and the Spatial Politics of Planned Company Towns. In S. McGrath-Champ, A. Herod, & A. Rainne (Eds.), Handbook of Employment and Society: Working Space (pp. 179-196). Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781849806305.00020
Oberdeck, K. J. (2010). Of Tubs and Toil: Kohler Workers in an Empire of Hygiene, 1920–2000. International Review of Social History, 55(3), 447-483. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859010000404
Oberdeck, K. J. (2009). Hewers of Words and Drawers of Water. Journal of Women's History, 21(3), 140-143. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.0.0101
