Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis, where she teaches courses on the social, cultural, economic, and gender history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. She is the author of The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (2009), which considers black and white women as workers, shoppers, and creditors, and a coauthor of Global Americans (2017), a college textbook on American history in global context. With Lisa G. Materson, she is a coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of American Women's and Gender History (2018). She is currently finishing another book, "America under the Hammer: Auctions and Market Culture, 1700-1850."
Acquiring goods was both unpaid labor and an opportunity for shoppers to force economic connections, express taste, and participate in politics. This lecture examines the many dimensions of shopping in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.