Shaun S. Nichols
Specializations
History of Capitalism
Labor and Immigration
U.S. and the World
Education
Ph.D., Harvard University, 2016
A.M., Harvard University, 2012
B.A., Western Washington University, 2010
Shaun S. Nichols is an Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University, where his research and teaching center on the history of capitalism, labor, and immigration in the United States and the world. His most recent book, Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present (Oxford University Press: 2024), uses the economic history of Massachusetts to reevaluate traditional tales of nineteenth century “industrialization” and twentieth-century “deindustrialization.” Instead, by following the constant churn of migrant labor and mobile capital in and out of Massachusetts and across the globe over the past two centuries, it offers a much more troubling, cyclical history of incessant economic creation, devastation, and reconstruction. At Boise State, he teaches courses on American and global economic history, labor history, and American intellectual history.
Before coming to Boise State, Dr. Nichols served as a College Fellow in History at Harvard University, a Visiting Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, and an Associate of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He has written book reviews and articles for journals such as Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Enterprise & Society, the Business History Review, and Labour/Le Travail. He has also published work on the teaching of business history around the world as well as a beautifully illustrated children’s book, History is Rich, which offers an introduction to the economic history of the United States for youths ages 8-13.
Contact
Office: L177
shaunnichols@boisestate.edu
Spring 2024 Office Hours:
M: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm F2F
Tu: 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm via ZOOM
Teaching
UF 100: History of American Capitalism
HIST 268: Working in America: Class, Labor, and Inequality
HIST 350: United States Economic History
HIST 356: Debating Capitalism: The History Of American Economic Thought
HIST 357: When The Bottom Falls Out: Economic Crisis in American History
HIST 358: Global Capitalism
Selected Scholarship
Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
“Harmonious Insurrections: ‘Labor Progressivism’ and Working-Class Power in Washington State, 1886–1919,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 17, no. 2 (May 2020): 47-72.
History is Rich (Los Angeles: Honest History, 2022).
[An illustrated introduction to American economic history for youths ages 8-13]