Susan Matt (2014)

History department chair Susan Matt is this year’s recipient of the John S. Hinckley Fellow Award. Colleagues cite her creativity and vitality in scholarship and service, and students praise her contagious charisma and excitement in the classroom.

 

Matt has helped many students apply for grants to conduct archival research around the country in order to gather and transcribe oral histories and present their findings at national conferences.

 

She teaches in the Venture Program, a humanities course for low-income adults that eases the transition into college. Since the program’s inception in 2008, Matt has helped many students understand American history and their place in it.

 

Matt’s own research focuses on the history of emotions — particularly the emotional habits that accompany modern individualism and capitalism. She is the author of two books, Homesickness: An American History and Keeping Up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890–1930.