Email: swuepper@luc.edu

Office: Crown Center 557 / Crown Center 334E

Faculty Advisor: Timothy Gilfoyle

Program: Joint Doctoral Program in American History and Public History

Loyola University Chicago (2014-Present)

PhD

• Public History / United States History

Free University of Berlin (2011-2014)

Bachelor of Arts

• North American Studies (major)
• History (minor)

My primary research interests lie on the relations and experiences of German immigrants in the nineteenth century US. Currently I am researching German-American immigrants fleeing Europe in the wake of the 1848 revolutions, and the lives and communities these men and women built in the Midwest, especially in the cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Milwaukee. I am exploring the way that their immigration experience shaped their political convictions, and how their ideology changes over time. I am interested in questions of immigrant identity formation, and the formation of trans-national networks of immigrants in the nineteenth century, and how these networks acted and interacted both with the immigrants countries of origin as well as with the United States as their new home country of choice. 

In doing that, I am studying the lives of newspaper editors and publishers across the Midwest, especially those of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung out of Chicago and those of the Anzeiger des Westens out of St. Louis. I explore how the immigrants running these newspapers become thought leaders of their respective German community, and the way their work influences sentiment on issues like the American Civil War, which many German-American immigrants ended up partaking in. 

The Henry Cohen Papers - Loyola Archives (Spring 2016)

Chrysler Village Oral History Project (Fall 2015)

Pottery - A Timeless Tradition: Year long exhibit at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, Evanston, IL (Summer 2015)

Chicago Harbor Lighthouse National Landmark Register Nomination (Summer 2015)

Glessner House Museum & Clarke House Museum Evaluation Project (Summer 2015

Explore Devon: A Multicultural Experience - Walking Tour Project (Fall 2014)

Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, Evanston, IL (2015)

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, OH (2012)