Todd Michney
Assistant Professor
- School of History and Sociology
- Center for Urban Innovation
- Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center
Overview
Todd M. Michney is an Assistant Professor in the School of History and Sociology who focuses on urban history, digital history, African American history, and the history of race and ethnicity. Dr. Michney is the author of Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017), as well as articles in the Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, Journal of Planning History, and Reviews in American History. His current research interests include black building tradesmen and the extent of African American access to New Deal mortgage supports. Michney has sat on the board of the Urban History Association and twice served as a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant evaluator.
At Georgia Tech, he was a member of the research team at the Center for Urban Innovation from 2015-17, and won DILAC grants from 2016-19 to digitize the Ivan Allen Mayoral Papers and develop a customized search interface for the collection. In the Fall of 2019, Michney won an award for Excellence in the Educational Use of Historical Records for the project from the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council, and in January 2020, he along with two co-investigators won a two-year grant from the NEH's Office of Digital Humanities to continue developing the project's user interface. Michney teaches a Serve-Learn-Sustain-affiliated course entitled “Semester in the City: Engaging Communities,” which involves partnering with organizations which in the past have included the Historic Westside Cultural Arts Council, Emerald Corridor Foundation, Grove Park Foundation, and Greater Vine City Opportunities Program.
- Ph.D. in U.S. History, University of Minnesota
- M.A. in U.S. History, University of Minnesota
- B.A. in History, Case Western Reserve University
Interests
- Global Cities and Urban Society
- U.S. Society and Politics/Policy Perspectives
Focuses:
- United States
- Race/Ethnicity
- Digital Humanities
Courses
- HIST-2112: United States since 1877
- HTS-2013: Modern America
- HTS-2086: Semester in the City
- HTS-3005: Amer Environmental Hist
- HTS-3006: United States Labor Hist
- HTS-3011: City in American Hist
- HTS-4091: Seminar Global Issues
- HTS-4814: Special Topics
Selected Publications
Books
Journal Articles
- New Perspectives on New Deal Housing Policy: Explicating and Mapping HOLC Loans to African Americans
In: Journal of Urban History [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2020
- Terror in the City Too Busy to Hate: How the English Avenue School Bombing Challenged Atlanta's Popular Myth of Racial Progress
In: Atlanta Studies [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2020
- White Civic Visions Versus Black Suburban Aspirations: Cleveland’s Garden Valley Urban Renewal Project
In: Journal of Planning History [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2011
- Constrained Communities: Black Cleveland’s Experience with World War II Public Housing
In: Journal of Social History [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2007
- Race, Violence, and Urban Territoriality: Cleveland’s Little Italy and the 1966 Hough Uprising
In: Journal of Urban History [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2006
Chapters
- Trepidation, Tolerance, and Turnover: Jewish-Black Relations in Cleveland Neighborhoods, 1920-1960
In: Cleveland Jews and the Making of a Midwestern Community [Peer Reviewed]
Date: 2020