Amy Richter

Professor, History
Department Chair, History

Professor Richter specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century American and cultural history, with an emphasis on women’s and urban history. Her teaching repertoire includes the history of American Women, U.S. urban history from the colonial era to the twenty-first century, Gender and the American City, and American Consumer Culture. She is also the author of Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity (2005) and At Home in Nineteenth-Century America: A Documentary History (2015). Her current research looks at marriage and the consumer marketplace at the turn of the twentieth century.

In addition, Professor Richter teaches U.S. History and serves as the Academic Director of the Worcester Clemente Course in the Humanities. The Clemente Course in the Humanities is an award-winning college-level seminar for highly motivated low-income adults seeking to build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Degrees

  • Ph.D. in History, New York University, 2000
  • B.A. in Urban Studies, Columbia College, Columbia University, 1991

Affiliated Department

History

Scholarly and creative works

  • Chapters In Books

    Clementinos: Voices from the Clemente Writing Project
    Chapter: “Students, Archives, and Metaphors

    Published by University of Massachusetts Press
    2024
    Amy Richter
  • Chapters In Books

    A Cultural History of Furniture
    Chapter: “Self, Stories, and Furniture in the Nineteenth-Century”

    Published by Bloomsbury Academic
    2022
    Amy Richter
  • Other Scholarly or Creative Work

    “Every Atom #56: Every Atom: Reflections on Walt Whitman at 200″

    Vol. Summer 2019
    University of Northern Iowa
    Cedar Falls, Iowa
    US
    Amy Richter
  • Other Scholarly or Creative Work

    “Material History and A Victorian Riddle Retold,”

    June
    George Washington University
    Amy Richter
  • Book

    At Home in Nineteenth-Century America: A Documentary History

    2015
    New York, NY
    Amy Richter
  • Book

    Home on the Rails: Women, the Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity

    Gender & American Culture Series
    2005
    Chapel Hill, NC
    Amy Richter