Briann G. Greenfield

Areas of Specialization: New England Regional Culture, Public and Popular Memory, History of Historic Preservation, Museum Studies

Briann G. Greenfield received her B.A. in history from the University of New Hampshire in 1992. She received her M.A. in Museum Studies from the Department of American Civilization at Brown University. In 1999 and 2000 respectively, she received pre-doctoral fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and the Winterthur Museum. She finished her Ph.D. in American Civilization at Brown in 2002. Dr. Greenfield joined the history department at CCSU in 2001. She became coordinator of the public history program in the following year. In 2004, she held a National Endowment for the Humanities/ Winterthur Museum fellowship. In 2010, she received the Connecticut State University Board of Trustees Research Award for CCSU. 

As coordinator of the public history program, Dr. Greenfield teaches courses in public history, museum studies, and material culture studies. She is the author of Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth-Century New England (published by UMass Press) which examines the rise of the modern market for antique goods.

Dr. Greenfield is active in the Connecticut public history community. She is a board member of the Connecticut Humanities Council, where she serves on the Connecticut Heritage Revitalization Fund Review Board, the Heritage Advisory Committee, and chairs the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online Oversight Committee. She also serves on the Connecticut Historical Society’s Collections Steering Committee, and on the editorial team of Connecticut Explored, a state-wide history magazine.

Selected Publications:

• Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth-Century New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009).
• "A House in the Nation’s Attic," a review essay on the exhibit "Within These Walls" at the National Museum of American History, American Quarterly 56 (2004): 151-162.
• "Marketing the Past: Historic Preservation in Providence, Rhode Island," in Randy Mason and Max Page, eds., Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Preservation in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2003).
• "’Things That Work’: The Artifacts of Industrialization," Organization of American Historians Magazine of History (2000). With Patrick Malone.