Erin McCarthy

Biography

Erin McCarthy, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History in the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences Department, teaches United States history with a focus on Chicago/urban history, the New Deal, baseball, and public history. She also teaches in the Columbia Core, the Communications Department and the Honors Program.

Currently, McCarthy is revising a manuscript on the life and career of Amos Alonzo Stagg. Her article, “’Is Oral History Good for You?’...”, was published by the Oral History Review (2010), and her essay “Oral History in the Undergraduate Classroom: Getting Students into History” is included in Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians: an Anthology of Oral History Educators (Alta Mira Press, 2006). McCarthy is the recipient of the Oral History Association’s Postsecondary Teaching Award (2006) and was named a summer fellow by the Oral History Research Office (Columbia University, 2003). In 2010, she designed and co-curated "Hard Times Yesterday & Today...", a multimedia project for the Center for Creative Aging at Harold Washington College. From 1997-2004, she was the lead oral historian for the Columbia College Chicago Oral History Project, and she continues to serve as a regional workshop leader for the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project. 

Since 2000, McCarthy's honors students have contributed more than 400 transcribed, oral history interviews to the Veterans History Project, National Hellenic Museum, Chicagoland Anti-Apartheid Movement Project, and Chicago Area Women's History Council. 

McCarthy received her B.A. from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago.

Degrees

B.A., History University of Illinois Urbana Champaign 1981
M.A., History Loyola University Chicago 1985
Ph.D., History Loyola University Chicago 1994