James A. Schmiechen

James A. Schmiechen received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1974. He joined the department of history at CMU in 1979.

Research Interests

Professor Schmiechen is currently interested in the intersection between the two most 'traditional' fields in nineteenth-century historical studies—that of urban and economic/labor history—and the new methodologies that have emerged out of post-structuralist/post-modern historiography and recent work in historical geography. Specifically, his work centers on a view of nineteenth-century cities and urban development through the methodologies of spatial history—how a reading of urban space and architecture allows the historian to merge constructions such as gender, identity, the public sphere, civic society, and material life and culture into an understanding of how the modern world was formed.