Landscapes of Wealth: Instant Cities and Global Suburbs in China and Beyond

Margaret Pugh O'Mara, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Washington, will present "Landscapes of Wealth: Instant Cities and Global Suburbs in China and Beyond" at the Chicago History Museum.

Margaret O'Mara is a historian of 20th century America, specializing in political and urban history. Her research focuses on postwar political institutions, the rise of the global knowledge economy, and the evolution of post-industrial urban economic geographies. She is the author of Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton, 2005), which considered the relationship between metropolitan development, higher education, and the Cold War state in determining the geography of the high-tech economy. Her current research pursues these themes on a transnational scale, considering the role of political institutions in economic globalization and urban change in the US and around the world since 1940.

Professor O'Mara teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on political history, urban history, environmental history, and Western history as well as core survey courses and seminars in U.S. history.