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Morgan Barry

Postdoctoral Fellow

PhD Northwestern 2026

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  American History, Before 1900; American History, Since 1900

Thematic Field(s):  Legal and Criminal History; Gender and Sexuality History; Urban History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Race, gender, and sexuality in the 20th century US; law enforcement; activism

Biography

Morgan E. Barry (Ph.D., Northwestern, 2026) is a historian of race, sex, and coercive state power in the twentieth-century United States. Her dissertation, “Suspicious Intelligence: Sex, Race, and Surveillance in Chicago, 1945-1982,” presents a grassroots history of countersubversive policing, specifically focusing on how rank-and-file investigators’ ideas about race, gender, and sexuality shaped surveillance methodologies and broader perceptions of threat during the Cold War. Her most recent published work, “SUBJECT’s Wife: The Racialized Gender Logics of Anticommunism and State Surveillance,” (Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 48, no. 4) explores how sexist-racist ideologies influenced Black women’s experiences of anticommunism in 1950s Chicago. Barry currently serves as an Assistant Editor at Public Books. She is also revising a second peer-reviewed article on the Legion of Justice, a white power militia hired by the Chicago Police Department and the US Military to surveil and harass antiwar activists from 1969-1971.

Affiliated Programs

Northwestern’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program

Publications

  • “SUBJECT’s Wife: The Racialized Gender Logics of Anticommunism and State Surveillance,” (Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 48, no. 4).

Teaching Interests

Barry’s teaching interests include: urban history; legal history; politics; women’s history; LGBTQ+ history; and African American history.

Recent Awards and Honors

  • T. H. Breen Fellowship, Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, Northwestern University (2025)
  • Littleton-Griswold Grant for Research in US Legal History, American Historical Association (2023)
  • Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics, Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State University (2023)
  • Ida B. Wells Fellowship, The Coordinating Council for Women in History (2023)