Sarah Igo

Sarah E. Igo is the Andrew Jackson Chair in American History. She received her A.B. in Social Studies from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in History from Princeton University.  As Dean of Strategic Initiatives for the College of Arts and Science, she led and implemented a far-reaching curricular reform that will launch in Fall 2025: the A&S College Core.  She also co-directs the Open Dialogue Visiting Fellows Program. Igo was the inaugural Faculty Head of E. Bronson Ingram College and is a former director of Vanderbilt’s Program in American Studies.  

Professor Igo teaches and writes about modern U.S. cultural, intellectual, legal and political history, with special interests in the human sciences, the sociology of knowledge, and the public sphere.  Igo’s most recent book, The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2018), traces U.S. debates over the meaning of privacy, beginning with “instantaneous photography” in the late nineteenth century and culminating in our present dilemmas over social media and big data.