DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Biography

Ben Miller studies twentieth century U.S. social and political history. His research focuses on the making of diverse communities and ideas about diversity in the decades after World War II. Ben’s dissertation project, grounded in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, shows how the rise of a professional economy undermined segregation and created increasingly multiracial neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. To sustain them, ordinary Americans of different races came to embrace diversity as the basic principle of community life, and ultimately as the foundation of a new American liberalism. Ben’s interests cut across race, housing, immigration, capitalism, and popular culture.

Ben also serves as research director for the Chicago Covenants Project, which studies the racial restrictions that once segregated communities across Cook County.  He leads teams of volunteers and research assistants who identify covenants and investigate the people and organizations that produced them. To learn more, see the Chicago Covenants Project website.

Before coming to Northwestern, Ben worked in fair housing policy and completed a BA and MA in history at the University of Chicago. He has contributed to projects for the National Archives, American Historical Association, Norton & Co, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, and WETA-TV.