Mary-Elizabeth Murphy, Ph.D.

Assistant teaching professor

Office: 5025 MacAlister Hall
Phone: (215) 895-0992
Email: mbm82@drexel.edu

Curriculum Vitae: Download

Education

• Ph.D., History, University of Maryland, College Park, 2012
• A.B., History, Mount Holyoke College, 2004

Biography

I am an assistant teaching professor in the Department of History and Politics. I teach courses in African American and U.S. history, including surveys and upper-level classes.

My dissertation draws together my interests in African American history, gender, politics, and urban space. “Mapping African American Women’s Activism: Politics and Organizing in Washington, D.C. 1920-1930” charts a social history of black women’s politics, organizing, and activism to analyze ways that African American women addressed issues within their neighborhoods, across the city at large, and throughout the country. By employing “mapping” as a method, I examine the spatial geography of Washington, D.C. to understand how women’s political activism was informed by the differences in the neighborhoods in which they lived, the spaces in which they worked, and their varying webs of organizational and institutional affiliations.

Publications

• “War Veterans as Central Actors in New Deal Politics,” review of Stephen Ortiz,
  Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal
  Era (2009), H-Net, September 2011.
• “Making Their Capital Safe for Democracy: African American Women’s Politics
  in Washington’s Phyllis Wheatley Y.W.C.A., 1917-1930,” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., April 8, 2010.
• “African American Women’s Politics in Federal Offices, 1920-1930,” Society for
  Historians of the Federal Government Annual Meeting, College Park, Maryland,
  March 25, 2010.
• “Organizing the District Union: The National Association of Wage Earners At the
  Local Level,” Association for the Study of African American History and Life
  Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 3, 2009.
• “‘To Remove this Undemocratic Blot from Our National Escutcheon’: African
  Americans Protest Civil Service Segregation, 1921-1929,” Organization of
  American Historians Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., April 20, 2006.