Caley Horan

Caley Horan serves as Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology within the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Based in office E51-296g, she holds a prominent position in MIT's History department with contact information cdhoran@mit.edu and phone number (617) 324-7321.

Professor Horan's research centers on the social dimensions of economic concepts in twentieth-century America, with particular focus on business history, the evolution of capitalism, risk assessment systems, and post-1945 American culture. Her scholarly approach examines how economic frameworks shape social structures, political institutions, and cultural norms, with special attention to the privatization of security mechanisms.

At MIT, Horan teaches undergraduate courses including American History Since 1865, Sexual and Gender Identities in the Modern US, The United States in the Nuclear Age, and American Consumer Culture. She also offers the History of American Capitalism course (co-taught with DUSP professor Jason Jackson) and graduate seminars such as Theories and Methods in the Study of History and Risk, Fortune, and Futurity (co-taught with STS professor William Derringer).

• 2022 Hagley Prize for best book in business history

Horan's research reveals how the insurance industry transformed American society through financing suburban development while withdrawing investment from urban centers, creating lasting patterns of inequality. Her work demonstrates how risk classification practices in the insurance industry limited access to security for marginalized communities, particularly poor people and people of color, through mechanisms like redlining. She argues that the industry's framing of insurance as individual contracts rather than collective risk-sharing mechanisms contributed to social atomization in American society.