Adam Mack

Adam Mack is an Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 2007. He holds a BA in History from James Madison University, and an MA and PhD in U.S. History from the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on cultural, business, and food history, particularly examining the symbolic and social roles of supermarkets in shaping American perceptions of abundance and consumption.

Notable works include Sensing Chicago: Noisemakers, Strikebreakers, and Muckrakers (2015), which won the Illinois State Historical Society's Superior Achievement Award, and his current project Limitless: Supermarkets and American Abundance, exploring how supermarkets became cultural icons of endless choice while masking underlying social inequalities. His articles appear in Journal of Social History, Senses & Society, and Cultural History of Senses in the Modern Age.

His research critically analyzes the intersection of consumer culture, environmental sustainability, and economic freedom narratives embedded in retail spaces. Recent work interrogates how supermarket design and marketing perpetuated myths of national abundance while obscuring issues like food deserts and consumer anxiety.