Faculty

Heidi Ardizzone

Assistant Professor

Field:  Nineteenth- and twentieth-century social and cultural history, gender and race in American culture.

Profile:  Heidi Ardizzone received her B.A. in Religion from Cornell University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan.  She began teaching at Notre Dame in 1999 and joined its regular faculty in 2002.  She has a concurrent appointment in the Department of History.
Professor Ardizzone has published two books and several scholarly articles.  Her first book, Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, (W.W. Norton, 2001,) was co-authored with Earl Lewis and explored the cultural significance of a 1920s annulment trial that drew nation-wide media attention.  Her most recent book, An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege, traces the racial and social history of a prominent woman in New York’s rare book and art world in the 1910s and 1920s.  An Illuminated Life was released in 2007 and named a New York Times Editor’s Choice.

Current Project: In addition to revising an article, “Rumors of Race: Ambiguity and Knowing in the Case of Belle da Costa Greene,” Ardizzone is now working on her third book, The Color of Blood: The Significance of Black-White Racial Mixing in American History.  She also has interests in media images of women and violence in the 1920s, as well as an oral history of African Americans at the University of Notre Dame

Teaching Interests: Her courses cover a range of social and cultural history topics including race and gender, American homefront experiences, social protest movements, women and religion, African American Studies and Native American Studies.

Recent Publications: In addition to her recent book, An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from  Prejudice to Privilege, W.W. Norton & Co., (2007,) Professor Ardizzone’s article “'Such Fine Families’:  Photography and Race in the Work of Caroline Bond Day, appeared in the October 2006 issue of Visual Studies and “Catching up with History:  Night of the Quarter Moon, The Rhinelander, and Interracial Marriage in 1959,” will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Mixed Race Hollywood, New York University Press.

Contact Information
Office: 326 Decio Hall
Phone: (574) 631-4144
Email: hardizzo@nd.edu
Office Hours:  on leave for AY 2008-2009