Thomas J. Adams, Ph.D.

Education

• Ph.D., History, University of Chicago

• M.A., Social Sciences, University of Chicago

• B.A., History and Women’s Studies, Tulane University

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy begins from three interrelated commitments:

1. A recognition and affirmation of the diverse knowledge and experience everyone brings to the classroom and our collective learning environment.

2. A desire to motivate in students a sense of the value--personally, ethically, and professionally--of a rigorous and scholarly approach to understanding the complexities of the worlds they inhabit.

3. A belief that effectively interpreting the world means actively engaging with it.

Echoing the philosopher John Dewey, I am convinced "that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience." I take this to mean that practically--and especially in the context of a variety of contemporary technological, cultural, and social transformations--the only education worthy of the name is grounded in a robust critical-interpretive method of understanding the world, our place in it, and what works for us. I have been appointed in History, Interdisciplinary Studies, American Studies, and Urban Studies departments and have taught in programs in African-American Studies, Human Rights, Law, Political Economy, and Women and Gender Studies as well. My classes at USA reflect this inter- and multidisciplinary background and seek to give students opportunities to engage with a variety of disciplinary, empirical, and theoretical perspectives and apply these to the interpretive problems that most interest them. I especially enjoy working with students on senior theses and helping them explore a wide diversity of research topics.

Research

I am a scholar of historical and contemporary American social, political, and cultural life with a particular interest in understanding how various kinds of social inequalities have been produced and at times overcome. My research ranges across a variety of spatial and temporal contexts with foci on the history and present of American labor, political economy, ascriptive ideologies, law, regionalism, and social movements and particular attention to urban and Gulf South contexts. During academic year 2025/26 I am a Faculty Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. While at Harvard I will be completing a book manuscript entitled "The Ideology of Inequality: Political Economy and the Problem of 'Service' Work in the United States." The book traces a centuries-long history of the server/servant as distinct category of laborer and ‘service’ as a discrete form of labor and economic good in Anglo-American culture, law, and social life. It then follows how this history formed the rarely acknowledged backdrop to political and cultural responses to the rise of and transition to a so-called service economy in United States from the end of World War II through the contemporary era. Other ongoing archival based research projects focus on circular labor migration from the 1880s-1920s in Gulf South cities and the labor and environmental politics and legal history of so-called Cost-Benefit Analysis in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, I am also at work on a critical-theoretical synthesis of post-18th Century labor history that explicitly eschews categorizations of work (industrial, service, agricultural, care, etc) and worker (proletarian, peasant, servant, enslaved, mother, etc) in favor of a thickly described and deeply contextual account of social compulsion.

𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

"The Pedagogical Possibilities of Contradictory ‘Rules’ in an Age of Large Language Models," 𝐶𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑇𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 (14), January 2026."Beyond the Katrina Moment: Exposure and the Political Economy of Invisibility After the Levee Failures," 𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 (51), August 2025. "Even the Dead Will Not Be Safe: Courageous History in the Hollers of West Virginia," in Paul Farber and Sue Mobley eds., 𝑀𝑜𝑛𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝐿𝑎𝑏-𝑅𝑒:𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2025). and Cedric Johnson, "Revisiting 𝑅𝑎𝑐𝑒, 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐶𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒," 𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 (50), April 2025 and Sue Mobley, Engraving Egalite in New Orleans: Street Renaming and the Municipal Politics of History, 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤, 128(3), 2023. " 'New Life, New Vigor, and New Values': Privatization, Service Work, and Rise of Neoliberal Urbanism in Postwar Southern California," in Andrew Diamond and Thomas Sugrue eds., 𝑁𝑒𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝐶𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝑃𝑜𝑠𝑡𝑤𝑎𝑟 𝐴𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑎 (New York: NYU Press, 2020). "A Lesson in Eventful Temporality: Pedagogies of Donald Trump from Abroad." 𝑃𝑆: 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙 𝑆𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠, 53(2), 2020. and Matt Sakakeeny eds., 𝑅𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑂𝑟𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠: 𝐵𝑒𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑑 𝐸𝑥𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐴𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019). "You Can't Have Carnival Without Lent," 𝑂𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝐽𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙, 2019. "Is Temporary Becoming Forever?" 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝐿𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑢𝑚, 28(3), 2019. "Writing the History of Capitalism With Class," 𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑒 (29), 2019. and Steve Striffler eds., 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑔 𝐸𝑎𝑠𝑦: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑃𝑜𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑟 𝑖𝑛 𝑁𝑒𝑤 𝑂𝑟𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑠 (Lafayette: University of Louisiana Press, 2014).

Outreach

My research also includes a variety of public history and humanities projects at the grassroots, university, non-profit, and governmental levels. I currently serve as Senior Historical and Research Advisor for Monument Lab, a non-profit public art and history studio that fosters critical conversations around monuments and public memory. My work with Monument Lab has included historical advising and editing for the podcast, Plot of Land, that tells stories of land use and inequality in the US. I also work closely with the cohorts Monument Lab's Re:Generation program that provides funding and collective support to expand the American commemorative landscape. From 2020-2022 I was the co-chair of the panel of scholarly experts that advised the New Orleans City Council Street Renaming Commission in their work rededicating more than forty streets and parks that previously honored men who committed treason against the United States and fomented rebellion against the Constitution. To our knowledge this is the largest attempt as yet undertaken to reimagine an urban landscape of commemoration. During my time as a faculty member at the University of Sydney I frequently appeared on tv and radio in Australia to discuss American political and social issues and regularly wrote research-based opinion essays in Australian and international publications. I continue to write essays for popular fora and occasionally still do media commentary for Australian outlets. I currently serve as board member for the Alabama Contemporary Art Center and an Advisory Committee Member for the Economic Justice Research Lab in New Orleans.

Biography

After receiving my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago I returned to the Gulf South on a Mellon Fellowship and later as an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship at Tulane University. In 2014 I took up a faculty position at the University of Sydney in Australia and spent eight years at Sydney’s United States Studies Centre and History Department where I remain an honorary faculty member and continue to work with Ph.D. students. I have been especially fortunate to have been awarded research fellowships that have allowed me in live in France and Germany and work closely with a variety of diverse scholars and students from around the world. When not teaching or trying to write, I love to take long backpacking trips, work on Mardi Gras costumes, cook, and play with my dog Lu. I’m an oft-suffering New Orleans Saints fan and am convinced that the Black and Gold were robbed of at least two Super Bowls during the Brees era.

Courses

• IST 101: Foundations of Interdisciplinary Studies
• IST 302: Interdisciplinary and Critical Thinking
• IST 430: Senior Research Thesis
• IST 490: Special Topics: Sports and Society
• IST 499: Honors Senior Thesis