Heidi Ardizzone.
Heidi Ardizzone has served as American Studies department chair from 2015-2021 and has been at Saint Louis University since 2011. Her publications have focused largely on the historical constructions of race, identity, and racial mixing in the U.S., including the definitive biography of Belle da Costa Greene. Greene’s significance in the art and rare book worlds is being celebrated in 2024 with the centennial of Manhattan’s Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum.
Since arriving in St. Louis, she has shifted her research to focus on race and civil rights movements in St. Louis and the Midwest.
Heidi Ardizzone is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Saint Louis University, where she teaches courses on civil rights movements, gender, race and citizenship, St. Louis and the Midwest, visual studies, media and politics, and social movements. As a Chair, Interim Chair, and Graduate Coordinator since 2015, she has developed public humanities programing and training for MA and PhD students in collaboration with local institutions and professionals.
She is currently finishing revisions for Mixed Blackness and Civil Rights: Racial Equality and the Black-White Figure in American Activism from Abolition to Integration, Oxford University Press. Previous publications include “Generational Activism and Civil Rights Organizing in St. Louis,” in Amanda Izzo and Ben Looker, eds., Left in the Midwest in the 1960s and 1970s, University of Missouri, 2023; “Fatherhood and Father Figures in Barack Obama’s Early Presidency, in Hettie Williams and G. Reginald Daniels, eds., Race and Post-Racialism in the Age of Obama: A More Perfect Union? 2014; An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege, Norton, 2007; “Catching up with History: Night of the Quarter Moon, The Rhinelander Case, and Interracial Marriage in 1959,” in Mixed Race Hollywood, 2008, and Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, Norton, 2001, co-authored with Earl Lewis.
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Resume/CV
Associate Professor, Saint Louis University, Department of American Studies
(Department Chair, 2015-2021; Interim Chair, 2023-present)
EDUCATION
University of Michigan
MA, Ph.D., Program in American Culture
Graduate Certificate, Women’s Studies
Cornell University
B.A., cum laude, Independent Major in Comparative Religion
AWARDS and HONORS
Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer
2018-present
Saint Louis University Bicentennial Fellowship
2016-2018
Donald G. Brennan Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching
2013
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Books Published
An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege, W.W. Norton & Co.
*New York Times Editor’s Choice, July 2007
*Booklist 2007 Editor’s Choice, January 2008
2007
Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, W. W. Norton & Co., co-authored with Earl Lewis
2001
Books in Progress
The Black-White Figure, Early Civil Rights Activism, Black-White Mixing And the Construction of Blackness (under contract, in editing)
2025-26
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Generational Activism and Civil Rights Organizing in St. Louis,” in Amanda Izzo and Ben Looker, eds., Left in the Midwest in the 1960s and 1970s, University of Missouri
2022
“’Everything His Father Was Not:’ Fatherhood and Father Figures in Barack Obama’s First Term,” in Hettie Williams and G. Reginald Daniels, eds., Race and the Obama Phenomenon, University of Mississippi Press
2014
“Catching up with History: Night of the Quarter Moon, The Rhinelander Case, and Interracial Marriage in 1959,” in Camilla Fojas and Mary Beltran, eds., Mixed Race Hollywood, NYU Press, 87-112
2008
“'Such Fine Families’: Photography and Race in the Work of Caroline Bond Day, Visual Studies, 106-132
2006
Digital and Public Humanities
“Bringing Saint Louis University’s Racial History to Campus”
P.I. on a joint project with Ong Center for Digital Humanities and Computer Science to create a database-driven application that maps historical events, movements, and individuals in African American history to create digital tours
2020-2023
Public Humanities Initiative
2019-present
Advisor, Public Humanities Working Group 2
The Initiative and Working Group brings public humanities scholars and practitioners to campus for interdisciplinary talks, workshops and panels.
2018-2021
Solicited Peer Reviewer for Academic Manuscripts I Tatti Press, Oxford University Press, Yale University Press, University of North Carolina, and multiple journals
ACADEMIC LECTURES AND PRESENTATIONS
Invited Academic Talks and Interviews (selected)
Panelist: Symposium in Honor of Belle da Costa Greene
Pierpont Morgan Library and Museums, NY
October 2024
Featured Speaker: The Biography of Belle da Costa Greene
Sarasota County Library, FL
March 2023
Panelist: “The Reinvented Life of Belle da Costa Greene”
Vanderbilt University, TN
February 2022
Panelist: “Private Lives of Public Women”
The Preservation Society of Newport County, RI (Zoom)
April 2022
Plenary Speaker: “Belle Greene and the (In)Stability of Blackness,” Medieval Studies Conference in Celebration of Belle da Costa Greene
SLU
November 2018
Lecturer: “Belle Greene in New York and the Art World: Racial Identity in the Progressive Era”
Sogang University, Seoul SK
May 2018
Lecturer: “Belle Greene and Dorothy Miner: Women’s Networks in Early Art Libraries,”
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD
November 2014
Lecturer: "The Color of Blood: Ancestry and Identity in Early African American Protest," History Department Talk Series
Washington University, St. Louis
March, 2014
Lecturer: “Communicating Race: Passing and the Performance of Race”
Concordia University, Illinois
March 2011
Lecturer: “‘Just Because I Am a Librarian, That Doesn’t Mean I Have to Dress Like One’: Race and Identity in Belle da Costa Greene’s Career”
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
November, 2008
Lecturer: “The Woman Behind the Curtain: Belle da Costa Greene”
The Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh
November, 2007
Lecturer: “Hiding in the Light: Tracing the Journey of Belle da Costa Greene”
The Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, New York
June 2007
Lecture: “Bridging Modernity: the Rhinelander Case and Gender in Early Twentieth-Century American Culture”
Women’s History Month, St. Mary’s College, Indiana
March 2007
Book Talk: “Love on Trial: The Rhinelander Case,” with Earl Lewis Midwest Consortium for Black Studies, Annual Meeting
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
April 2002
Book Talk: “Love on Trial: The Rhinelander Case,” with Earl Lewis
The Newberry Library, Chicago
February 2002
Interview: (Love on Trial), with Earl Lewis,
“Talk of the Nation,” National Public Radio
May 2001