Reiko Hillyer

I am a social and cultural historian of the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries, with specialties in the American South, African American history, the history of public memory, the built environment, and mass incarceration. A methodological commitment that runs throughout my work is the history of the built environment, which means looking at physical space—from factories to theme parks—as a way of understanding historical processes. The first course I created at Lewis & Clark when I arrived as a teaching fellow in 2004—called “Constructing the American Landscape”—came out of those interests, and I have been offering it ever since. Related to this theme is my course called “From Stumptown to Portlandia: The History of Portland,” for which students design and deliver historical walking tours of Portland neighborhoods. I also teach courses in Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies.

My proudest accomplishment is bringing the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program to Lewis & Clark, which is a program that began at Temple University and whose mission is to bring undergraduates inside prisons to learn alongside people who are incarcerated. My course, “Crime and Punishment in US History” is taught at Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) in North Portland to an integrated group of Lewis & Clark and incarcerated students. In 2019, I won a Public Humanities Seed Grant from the Whiting Foundation to produce a piece of devised theater at CRCI as the culmination of this class. In 2021, the Oregon Community Foundation awarded me $75,000 to produce a second devised theater piece, generated by incarcerated and free students, at an acclaimed local theater with professional actors. I collaborated on this project with Rebecca Lingafelter in the Theater Department and mounted the theater piece in summer 2023. An article about our work at CRCI can be found here.