Professional and Biographical Information

Degrees

Ph.D., Brandeis University (2004) 
M.A., Brandeis University (1999)
B.A., Northwestern University (1998)

 

Teaching Interests

Drawing on social, intellectual, and political history, I teach about the African American experience from the slave trade to the present. As a historian of education, most of my courses center on race and schooling. I offer courses in Black Studies, History, and Education Studies. Students in my seminar “Slavery and the American Imagination” explore historical and literary depictions of the “peculiar institution” to uncover connections between America's racial past and its racial present. Students in "Race and Educational Opportunity" trace the relationship between race and educational opportunity from the early ninteeth-century to the present day. This course emphasizes how race has influenced access to education, and how America has attempted to dismantle the educational inequalities created under slavery and Jim Crow. I also enjoy teaching about an array of historical and contemporary educational issues including the politics and history of school choice, residential segregation, struggles for desegregation, and the relationship between geography and educational opportunity. I regularly teach the "Purpose and Politics of Education," which introduces students to Education Studies.

Selected Publications

"The Voice of Choice: Transpacific Educational Exchanges in the Neo-liberal Era," Presidential Address delivered at the History of Education Society Annual Meeting," Atlanta, Georgia, November 4, 2023, to be published in History of Education Quarterly, forthcoming. 

"From Open Enrollment to Controlled Choice: How Public School Choice Assignment Replaced the Neighborhood School in Cambridge, Massachusetts," History of Education Quarterly vol. 59, no. 3 (August 2019): 313-350.

"Assessing the Impact of the Inner Belt: MIT, Highways, and the Housing Market in Cambridge, Massachusetts," with Yinan Zhang and Andy Anderson, Journal of Urban History vol. 40, no. 6 (November 2014): 1079-1098.

"Race and Schooling in Early Republican Philadelphia," in The Great Contest: The Founding Fathers, Education, and the American Philosophical Society, ed. Benjamin Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 103-118.

Schooling Citizens: The African American Struggle for Education in Antebellum America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).

"The Tarring and Feathering of Thomas Paul Smith: Common Schools, Revolutionary Memory, and the Crisis of Citizenship in Antebellum Boston," New England Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 2 (June 2007), 218-241.

“Education's Inequity: Opposition to Black Higher Education in Antebellum Connecticut,” History of Education Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 16-35.

Awards and Honors

President, History of Education Society (HES) (2022-2023)

Vice-President and Conference Chair/President-Elect, History of Education Society (HES) (2021-2022)

Resident Scholar at the Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria University (Wellington) (2021-2024)

Finalist for John David Stout Fellowship in New Zealand Studies (2022)

Faculty Research Award (FRAP) large grant for "There Goes the Neighborhood School: A Comparative and Transnational History of Zoning and Choice in Late 20th century Aotearoa/New Zealand and the United States," 2019

Semi-Finalist for Fulbright Scholar Award (New Zealand) (2019), (2020)

Outstanding Reviewer Award, History of Education Quarterly, (2014)

Essayist in volume selected for the Critics' Choice Book Award, American Educational Studies Association (AESA), (2014)

Outstanding Book Award for Schooling Citizens: The African American Struggle for Education in Antebellum America (Chicago, 2009), History of Education Society, (2010)

Max and Etta Lazerowitz Lecture, Amherst College, (2009)

Ray Ginger Memorial Lecture, Brandeis University, (2008)

Amherst College Trustee Faculty Fellowship, (2007-2008)

Claude A. Eggersten Prize, Best Dissertation, History of Education Society, (2005)

Dissertation Year Fellowship (Brandeis University), (2003-2004)

Spencer Graduate Fellowship in Education (The Spencer Foundation and Brandeis University), (2002-2003)

Associate Fellowship, The Gilder Lehrman Institute for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (Yale University), 2001-2002

University Prize Instructorship (Brandeis University), (2001-2002)

Rose and Irving Crown Fellowship (Brandeis University), (1998-2002)

B.A., summa cum laude, Northwestern University

Scholarly and Professional Activities

Past President, History of Education Society (HES) (2023-2024)

President, History of Education Society, (HES) (2022-2023)

Deputy Director, Stout Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, (2022)

Vice-President and Conference Chair/President-Elect, History of Education Society (HES) (2021-2022)

Editorial Board, History of Education Quarterly (2010-2012)

Links

The Amherst Student: Professor Hilary Moss Wins Dissertation Prize

Education's Inequity: Opposition to Black Higher Education in Antebellum Connecticut

See also: Research Interests

Tags:  Hilary Moss