FACULTY & STAFF

Dr. Lisa Tolbert

Contact Information

Email: lctolber@uncg.edu
Office: 2109 MHRA
Office Phone: 336-334-5992
Website: lisatolbert.com

Education

Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994
M.A. and Certificate in Museum Studies, University of Delaware, 1987
B.A., Vanderbilt University, 1983

Academic Positions

Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2023-present
Interim Director of Public History, Fall 2019
Associate Department Head, 2015-2017
Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2000-2022
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 1994-99
Instructor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994 
Teaching Fellow, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1992-1993
Teaching Assistant, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1988-1993
Writing Across the Curriculum Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1989
Teaching Assistant, University of Delaware, 1984-1986

Courses Taught/Undergraduate

• HIS 208: Topics in Modern World History: The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (taught for the Business School Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Learning Community)
• HIS 211: American History to 1865
• HIS 213: American History Topics: Technology in American History
• HIS 326: Using Photographs as Historical Evidence
• HIS 327: American Cultural history (undergraduate level, upper level History major)
• HIS 430: Historical Methods for Social Studies (requirement for Middle Grades and Secondary Licensure in Social Studies)
• HIS 440 Principles and Practices of Teaching History (requirement for Middle Grades and Secondary Licensure in Social Studies)
• HIS 411A/511A: Research and Writing Seminar, varied topics including
  • Doing History in the Dining Room - Students develop research projects in a museum context related to the history of foodways. Topics include the invention of the dining room, the social politics of tea drinking, and the archaeology of African American cooking.
  • Modernizing America: Mass Consumer Culture in the Roaring Twenties - Students developed research projects using digitized resources in the Library of Congress collection, Prosperity and Thrift.
  • Runaway Slaves and Digital History - This course aligned with campus visits in the spring 2018 by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Colson Whitehead, and the founding Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Lonnie Bunch. Students researched the history of runaway slaves using resources in our Digital Library of North Carolina Runaway Slave Ads. Students will read Whitehead’s book, The Underground Railroad and work on a digital exhibit on the history of runaway slave experience in North Carolina. We will explore the impact of digitization on historical research and interpretation. This course was the recipient of a Library Information Literacy Course Development Award to develop a public history version of our capstone course for history majors.

Courses Taught/Graduate

• HIS 512: Public History
• HIS 546: American Cultural History, Selected Topics including:
  • Social Landscapes of Food in History - This course explores the history of food production, procurement, and consumption through changes in spatial practices from the early modern era through the late twentieth century. It situates American history in the context of world history. Students use a variety of historical sources and methodologies, including memoirs, cookbooks, oral history, gender studies, material culture, anthropology, and geography.
  • Consumer Culture and Material Culture - Advanced reading seminar examines the development of consumer culture in the United States from the so-called “consumer revolution” of the eighteenth century through the creation of a mass consumer market in the twentieth century. The course focuses on how the study of material culture reveals social and political dynamics that have shaped consumer culture in American history.
  • Surveying the Field: Problems and Methods in Cultural History - Advanced reading seminar that provides an overview of key periods in the development of American culture from the colonial era to the early twentieth century and emphasizes interdisciplinary methodologies in the field.
  • Thinking Visually about History - Advanced reading seminar focusing on the critical perspectives and methods of historians who use some form of visual evidence in their work, from pre-industrial to mass-produced objects, and from paintings to photographs.
• HIS 624: History of American Landscapes and Architecture - Advanced reading seminar that introduces students to the variety of methods developed by architectural and cultural historians to interpret buildings and landscapes as cultural artifacts with historically specific meanings that must be understood in particular context over time.
• HIS 709: Introductory Research Seminar (MA requirement)
• HIS 714: Varieties of Teaching (PhD requirement

Selected Publications

• Beyond Piggly Wiggly: Inventing the American Self-Service Store, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2023, in association with the Southern Foodways Alliance.
• "Henry, A Slave vs. State of Tennessee: The Public and Private Space of Slaves in a Small Town." In Slavery in the Cities: Architecture and Landscapes of Urban Slavery in North America. Edited by Clifton Ellis and Rebecca Ginsburg, Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
• Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
• "Murder in Franklin: The Mysteries of Small-Town Slavery," in Trial and Triumph: Tennessee's African American History, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002.
• "Commercial Blocks and Female Colleges: The Small-Town Business of Educating Ladies." In Shaping Communities: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, Volume VI, pp. 204-215. Edited by Carter L. Hudgins and Elizabeth Collins Cromley. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. [Winner of the Southeast Society of Architectural Historians Award for Best Essay.]
• Other publications listed on Vitae.

Selected Awards and Honors

• UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2013
• UNCG Library Information Literacy Course Development Award, 2018
• UNCG Faculty First Research Award, 2017
• Research Assignment, UNCG, Fall 2014
• Hagley Research Seminar, April 2006
• Other awards listed on Vitae.

Curriculum Vitae