Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor is a specialist in early American and women’s history. In addition to her appointment in the History Department at the University of California, Davis, she is Acting Associate Dean for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars. She is an elected trustee of the Business History Conference, a founding and standing editor of Oxford Bibliographies Online—Atlantic History, and a board member of Women and Social Movements. She is a speaker with the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship Program.
Professor Hartigan-O’Connor’s research centers on the social and cultural history of economic life in 18th- and 19th-century America. She investigates how people used and thought about cash, credit, goods and exchange on a daily basis, with a particular focus on how women negotiated economies in early America. She is currently completing America Under the Hammer, about auctions and market culture.
With fellow UC Davis History faculty Lisa Materson, she co-edited the Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History (Oxford University Press 2018), which consists of 30 analytical chapters covering topics such as women and U.S. imperialism, interracial unions and state power, gender and sexuality in popular culture, and women’s work under free and unfree labor regimes.