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Abigail Trollinger
abby trollinger

Abby Trollinger

Associate Professor of History
History920-403-3205

Abigail (Abby) Trollinger is an associate professor of history who teaches courses on poverty and social welfare policy, immigration and women’s and gender studies. She studies American urban and social welfare history, focusing on the ways reformers, social workers, and workers articulated their beliefs and goals to impact social welfare policy. Her current project, funded by the American Philosophical Society, is a social biography of caseworkers in Chicago.

  • HIST 114 History of the United States I
  • HIST 115 History of the United States II
  • HIST 322 American Immigration History
  • HIST 324 Poverty, Charity, and Welfare in U.S. History
  • HIST 327 Women and Gender in U.S. History

  • B.A. – Goshen College
  • M.A. – Northwestern University
  • Ph.D. – Northwestern University

  • Urban history
  • Social welfare history
  • Immigration history

“Recent Work on Chicago History: Money, the State, and Inequality in the Quintessential American City,” the Journal of Urban History, August 2022

Becoming Entitled: Relief, Unemployment, and Reform During the Great Depression, 2020

“Revealing the ‘social consequences of unemployment’: The Settlement Campaign for Unemployment Insurance in the Twenties,” the Journal of Social History, Volume 52, Issue 4, (Summer 2019), Pages 1250–1280

“Women and Gender History,” chapter in The Routledge History of the 20th Century United States, June 2018