"My teaching at Goucher has been characterized by intensive engagement with students working with primary source documents and artifacts. Students in my classes closely study manuscripts and a wide variety of historical objects in order to make original contributions to our understanding of the past."
Tina Hirsch Sheller
Assistant ProfessorVisual & Material Culture
Tina Sheller is Assistant Professor of Visual and Material Culture in the Humanities Center at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. She completed her doctorate in history at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1990. Between 1992 and 2007, she taught courses in U.S. history, early American history and the history of Baltimore at the University of Maryland, College Park and at Towson University. Since coming to Goucher in the fall of 2007, Professor Sheller’s scholarly and teaching focus has switched to historic preservation, public history, and material culture studies. In conjunction with these new areas of teaching and scholarship, she and her students have done extensive research on several major projects, including “Recovering a Lost World: Epsom Farm, 1772-1921;” “Lest I Forget: The Wartime Diary of Vernon Goetz, 1944-1945;” and the Fleury Family Papers. She is continuing to work with students on these projects, and looks forward to collaborating with Professor April Oettinger in developing a course in museum studies as part of the new Visual and Material Culture program.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
Student-centered research projects:
“Recovering a Lost World: Epsom Farm, 1772-1921;”
“Lest I Forget: The Wartime Diary of Vernon Goetz, 1944-1945;”
The Fleury Family Papers.
Publications
“A Tangible Connection with the Past: The Goetz Diary Project.” Focus: Friends of the Goucher College Library Newsletter, Vol. 58, No. 2, Spring 2014.
“A Nursery for Militant Suffragists: The History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement at Goucher College.” Focus: Friends of the Goucher College Library Newsletter, Vol. 61, No. 2, Spring 2017.
“The Origins of Public Education in Baltimore, 1825-1829.” History of Education Quarterly 22 (Spring 1982), 23-43; republished in Urban Education in the United States: A Historical Reader. Edited by John L. Rury. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
“Freemen, Servants, and Slaves: Artisans and the Craft Structure of Revolutionary Baltimore Town.” In American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750-1850. Edited by Paul Gilje, Howard Rock, and Robert Asher. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Associate Editor, Latrobe’s View of America, 1795-1820: Selections from the Watercolors and Sketches. Edited by Edward C. Carter, II, John C. Van Horne, and Charles E. Brownell. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
Assistant Editor, The Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Three volumes. Edited by John C. Van Horne et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984-1988.
Invited Talks
“Climbing the Ladder of Success in a Nineteenth-Century Boomtown: The Cohen Family in Early Baltimore.” Jewish Museum of Maryland, 15 February 2015.
“A Nursery for Militant Suffragists: The History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement at Goucher College.” Harford Community College, 2 April 2019.
The History of Epsom Farm and Its Free and Enslaved Workers, Cliveden of the National Trust, Cliveden Conversations, May, 2019.
“Recovering a Lost World: Epsom Farm, 1772-1921.” Baltimore County Historical Society, 4 August 2019.
Academic or Professional Associations
American Historical Association
National Council on Public History
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
1978-1983 Assistant Editor, The Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Maryland Historical Society
1998-1999 Research and Oral History Coordinator, Chemical History Project, Baltimore Museum of Industry
Spring, 2000 Research Coordinator, History of the Baltimore Company Ironworks, Carroll Park Foundation, Baltimore
Spring 2001 Oral History Coordinator, “Working in Baltimore: 20th Century Memories,” Oral history project, Baltimore Museum of Industry
Summer 2001 Historical Consultant and Exhibit Coordinator, “Glassmaking in Maryland: An Introduction,” temporary exhibit, Baltimore Museum of Industry
2003-2004 Historical Consultant, “Memories of Baltimore Business,” oral history video, Baltimore Museum of Industry