Lisa Goff

University of Virginia

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Biographical Abstracts

Lisa Goff is an associate professor in the English and American Studies departments and affiliated faculty in the Architectural History Department at the University of Virginia (UVA), where she is also director of the Institute for Public History. Her scholarship focuses on American material culture and cultural landscapes in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Her first book, Shantytown, USA: Forgotten Landscapes of the Working Poor (Harvard University Press) was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2016. The book argues that shantytowns constituted an alternative vision of American urban space between 1820 and 1940, and that conflicts over shantytowns as places and symbols of working-poor culture were an essential element in the formation of 20th-century class difference in the United States. She is currently writing a book on the material culture of the free and enslaved at Montpelier, the home of President James Madison.

Goff teaches classes in cultural landscapes, migration, public history, material culture, digital mapping, and the history of journalism. She has developed two digital history projects at UVA: “Take Back the Archive,” dedicated to the history of sexual violence at the university; and “Finding Virginia’s Freetowns,” which seeks to digitally map and narrate the histories of dozens of Reconstruction-era Black settlements in central Virginia.

Community engagement is a key aspect of her pedagogy, and her series of “Hands-On Public History” courses have inspired students to pursue careers in public history and related fields. In 2023, she was honored with a Public Service Award from the university for her innovations in community-engaged curricula.

Areas of Expertise

• Cultural landscapes
• Material culture
• Digital mapping and narratives