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Erica Gilbert-Levin

Chabraja Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Service

Ph.D, Northwestern University, 2023; MA, Northwestern University, 2017; BA, Cornell University, 2015.
Curriculum Vitae

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  American History, Since 1900

Thematic Field(s):  Urban History; Political and Policy History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Racial politics, urban studies, housing and education policy, political culture, social movements

Biography

Erica Gilbert-Levin is a historian and author living in the Chicago area. Her research focuses on racial conflict and city politics in the twentieth century. Erica's scholarship explores how racial dynamics play out on the ground among ordinary people and how those dynamics shape and are shaped by the decisions of people in power. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Urban History, the Cornell Daily Sun, the Chicago Daily Herald, the Evanston RoundTable, and Ms. Magazine, and she is a contributor to the 2001 edition of the anthology Voices from the Next Feminist Generation. Under the auspices of the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, she is currently a Senior Research Specialist at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois – Chicago.

Affiliated Programs

Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois -- Chicago

Teaching Interests

History of Chicago, Civil Rights Movement, American Religious History.

Publications

“Class Feminist,” in Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation, edited by Barbara Findlen (Cypress, CA: Seal Press, 2001).

Articles

“Trumbull Talk: White Vernacular and the Politics of Persecution, 1953-1958,” Journal of Urban History (asked to revise and re-submit); “Erasing Race from the Urban Terrain: The ‘Colorblind’ Path to Place-Based Inequality,” Journal of Urban History 49, issue 3 (May 2023): 708-714; “Trade” (film review), Ms. Magazine 18, issue 1 (Winter 2008): 76.

Conference Presentations

“Disorganized/De-organized/Reorganized,” Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Colloquium, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa (May 26, 2018).

Awards and Honors

Knight Writing Institute Gertrude Spencer Portfolio Award, Cornell University, 2001