Victoria W. Wolcott

PhD

Prof. Victoria Wolcott.

Victoria W. Wolcott

PhD

Victoria W. Wolcott

PhD

Fields

20th century United States History; African American History; Gender and Sexuality; Social and Cultural History; Urban History

Education

  • PhD, University of Michigan, 1995
  • BA, New York University, 1989, magna cum laude

Courses Regularly Taught

HIS 162:  U.S. History II
HIS 379: African American History
HIS 306:  The City in American History
HIS 306:  Civil Rights in America
HIS 419: Race and the American City
HIS 459: American Utopias
HIS 503:  American History Core II
HIS 550:  The Long Civil Rights Movement

Current Research

My current research investigates the life and work of a Black pacifist and athlete during the cold war. This will culminate in a microhistory tentatively titled, The Embodied Resistance of Eroseanna Robinson: Athleticism and Activism in the Cold War Era. I am also drafting two articles related to the project:

“The Route 40 Desegregation Campaign and the Elkton Three,” and “Resistant Bodies: Female Hunger Strikes in Modern America,”

Selected Publications

Utopian Imaginings: Saving the Future in the Present (State University of New York Press, 2024)

Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022)

“Networks of Resistance: Floria Pinkney and Labor Interracialism in Interwar America,” Journal of African American History 105, 4 (Fall 2020): 567-592.

Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle Over Segregated Recreation in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)

Remaking Respectability: African-American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina Press, 2001)

“Radical Nonviolence, Interracial Utopias and the Congress of Racial Equality in the early Civil Rights Movement,” in The Journal of Civil and Human Rights, 4, 2 (Fall/Winter 2018): 31-61

“Recreation and Race in the Postwar City: Buffalo’s 1956 Crystal Beach Riot,” Journal of American History (June 2006): 63-90.

“The Culture of the Informal Economy:  Numbers Runners in Inter-War Black Detroit,” The Radical History Review (Fall 1997): 46-75.

Awards

  • Co-PI on Mellon Grant, “Communities of Care,” $2,527,000.00, 2023-2026
  • Elise M. Boulding Prize in Peace History for Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, June 2023
  • New Deal Book Award for Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, June 2023
  • Humanities Institute Fellowship, University at Buffalo, Spring 2020
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship, Spring 2016
  • Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians, 2014-present
  • Susan B. Anthony Institute Research Grant, University of Rochester, Spring 2010
  • Abraham J. Karp Award for Excellence in Teaching, University of Rochester, Spring 2005
  • Beveridge Grant, American Historical Association, 2002