Fiona Maxwell

Fiona Maxwell is an Assistant Professor of History at North Central College. Her teaching and research focus on Chicago history, urban history, and spoken performance in the long nineteenth-century United States. Her current book project, Democratic Ensembles: Spoken Art and Politics at Chicago Settlement Houses, uncovers how working-class, immigrant, and Black community members used verbal expression to rehearse a participatory civic culture. She has published in Gender & History, Lilith, Collections, and Youth Theatre Journal; presented her work at local and international conferences and in invited talks; contributed to C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Podcast; and consulted on public history projects at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Center for Women’s History and Leadership, and Newberry Library. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Chicago Women’s History Center. Also a theatre artist and educator, she combines historical scholarship with creative practice by writing and performing original storytelling pieces based on archival research at public history and theatre venues across the Chicago area, and she has taught and directed youth classes and performance ensembles at the Piven Theatre Workshop. Maxwell received her PhD in History with distinction from the University of Chicago and her BA in History and Theatre from Northwestern University.

Selected Scholarship

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

“‘Expression is Power’: Gender, Residual Culture, and Political Aspiration at the Cumnock School of Oratory, 1870-1900.” Gender & History 38 (2026): 121-138. First published online April 22, 2024. 

“‘Talking lowd and laughing gay, Everyone has so much to say’: Working Girls’ Clubs, Spoken Art, and Political Organizing at Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920.” Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (2025): 109–130.

“Site of Social Justice Advocacy, or Home of Godly Women? Interpreting Women’s Work at the Frances Willard House Museum.” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 20, no. 3 (2024): 439-449. Focus Issue: “Women and Museums,” edited by Juilee Decker, guest edited by Holly O’Farrell and Alice Twemlow.

Collins, Rives B. and Maxwell, Fiona G. “Tell it with Zest: The Generative Influence of Storytelling on the Origins of Creative Drama.” Youth Theatre Journal 31, no. 1 (2017): 23-34.

Contributions to Edited Volumes

“‘In Their Youthful Simplicity’: Performing Political Childhoods in the WCTU.” In Reassessing the White Ribbon Army: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union after 150 Years, edited by Adam Chamberlain, Janet Olson, and Alixandra B. Yanus. University of Kansas Press, 2026.

“The Old and the New: Immigrant Women and Intergenerational Connection at the Hull-House Labor Museum.” In Radical Craft: Arts Education at Hull-House, 1889-1935. Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 2024. Exhibition catalog essay.

Courses Taught

Chicago History

U.S. & Illinois to 1865

Lincoln and the Civil War Era