Kristin Lee Hoganson

Kristin Lee Hoganson is the Stanley S. Stroup Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with additional appointments in the Gender and Women's Studies department. Her scholarly work bridges American history with global and transnational perspectives, challenging conventional narratives about U.S. exceptionalism and isolation.

Education:

• Ph.D. from Yale University (1995)
• B.A. from Yale University (1987)

Hoganson's research focuses on U.S. foreign relations history and the history of U.S. empire in the long nineteenth century through World War I. Her work explores masculinity and policymaking around 1898, trade and global consumption patterns, border brokering, human mobility, geographic consciousness, imperial piggybacking, and alliance politics. She has also examined histories of militarism and war, colonialism and globalization, agriculture and the environment, and gender and sexuality across imperial contexts.

Her publications reveal a consistent interest in transnational and global approaches to American history, particularly in examining how seemingly local or domestic phenomena connect to broader imperial and global processes. Her work demonstrates how globalization happened at home through imports, immigrants, geographical knowledge, and consumer preferences, challenging narratives that position the U.S. as merely an exporter of culture and power.

Hoganson teaches courses on historical methods and writing, the United States in world context, U.S. foreign relations, the United States in an age of empire, local history in global context, food history, and U.S. nation building through 1877. Her influential books include The Heartland: An American History (2019), which rethinks the American Midwest as globally connected rather than isolated, and Consumers' Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920 (2007), which examines how global connections shaped American domestic life during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.