Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Professor
On leave, 2024-25 Academic Year
Timothy J. Gilfoyle (Ph.D. (1987), B.A. (1979), Columbia University) is professor and former chair of history at 黑料门University Chicago where he teaches American urban and social history. He was named 黑料门Faculty Member of the Year in 2018 and was the recipient of the Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence in 2023. He is the former president of the (2015-16). Gilfoyle's research has focused on the development and evolution of various 19th-century urban underworld subcultures and informal economies, exemplified by; ; and most recently . Gilfoyle’s interest in urban planning and public space led to (University of Chicago Press and the , 2006. He has published more than 100 articles and reviews in journals such as , Prospects, New York History, , and .
Gilfoyle writes a regular "Making History" feature in Chicago History based on oral history interviews he collects for the He is an associate editor of the (responsible for assigning recently published books in U.S. urban history for review), a co-editor (with Lilia Fernandez and Amanda Seligman) of the "Historical Studies in Urban America" series of the , and has served on the editorial boards for , (Yale University Press, 1995; second edition, 2010), The Encyclopedia of Chicago History , 2004), and the online .
Gilfoyle is a trustee of the Chicago History Museum (formerly the Chicago Historical Society) and a former member of the executive board of the Society of American Historians. He was previously a member of the board of directors for the (1996-2016). He has been a Minow Family Foundation Fellow (2001-02), a (1998-99), a Senior Fellow at the , (1997) and a N.E.H./Lloyd Lewis Fellow at the in Chicago (1993-94). He is an elected fellow of the (2011) and the (2007).
He also leads the , a semesterly historical bicycle tour of Chicago.
Research Interests
United States, urban history, history of sexuality, American social history.
Courses Taught
On leave 2023-24 Academic Year
Fall 2023
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Other Classes
HIST 103 American Pluralism
History 211: American Civilization before the Civil War, 1000-1865
HIST 212: American Civilization Since the Civil War, 1865-2023
History 290A: History of Sexuality in the United States
History 291: Junior Colloquium: The City in American History
History 300: Building Metropolis-A Social History of American Urban Architecture
HIST 385 - History of Chicago
History 386 Creation of the American Metropolis
History 396: Global Cities: A History of International Urbanization
History 396: History of Crime and Deviance in the Anglo-American World (old)
HIST 460: American Urban and Cultural History
History 558: Seminar in American Social and Cultural History, 1600-2012
Publications/Research Listings
, editor (Oxford University Press, 2019).
s, editor (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2013).
, coauthored with Patricia Cline Cohen and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2006; paperback 2007).
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press and Chicago Historical Society, 2006).
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1992; paperback, 1994)
Reviews in American History, vol. 26, no. 1 (March 1998), 175-204; and Louis P. Masur, ed. The Challenge of American History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999), 175-204; reprinted as “The New Paradigms of Urban History,” in Howard Chudacoff and Peter C. Baldwin, eds., Major Problems in American Urban and Suburban History, second edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 19-34.