Director of the Jane Addams Papers Project

Year Joined RCNJ: 2015

Contact Information

• Phone: (201) 684-7741
• Email: chajo@ramapo.edu
• Office: Learning Commons 204A

Education:

• B.A., Ramapo College of New Jersey
• M.A., New York University
• Ph.D., New York University

Courses Offered:

• Digital History

Teaching Interests:

• Women’s History
• Social History
• Public History
• Digital History

Research Interests:

• U.S. Social History
• Birth Control History

Scholarly Activity:

• Annotation in Practice (eLabs, free)
• Finding Documents (eLabs, free)
• Organizing Documents (eLabs, free)
• Selecting Documents (eLabs, free)
• Transcribing Documents (eLabs, free)
• What Will Your Edition Look Like (eLabs, free)

Books

• The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, Volume 4: Moving Beyond Hull-House, 1901-1907 (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press: forthcoming 2026), with Stacy Lynn and Victoria Sciancalepore, eds.
• Birth Control on Main Street: Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916-1940 (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010).
• Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 4: ‘Round the World for Birth Control, 1920-1966 (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016), with Esther Katz and Peter C. Engelman.
• Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 3: The Politics of Planned Parenthood, 1939-1966 (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010), with Esther Katz and Peter C. Engelman.
• Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928-1939 (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007) ), with Esther Katz and Peter C. Engelman.
• Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928 (Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003) ), with Esther Katz and Peter C. Engelman.

Articles/Book Chapters

• “Who Are We Editing For? How Digital Publication Changes the Role of the Scholarly Edition,” in Digital Editing & Publishing in the 21st Century (Scottish University Press: 2025).
• “Teaching Digital Skills in an Archives and Public History Curriculum,” with Peter Wosh and Esther Katz, in Brett D. Hirsh, ed. Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles, Politics (Open Book Publishers, 2012).
• “Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences,” in Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams (Oxford University Press: 2022).
• “Last Words: Documenting the End of Lives,” Documentary Editing, Fall 2006.

Conference Presentations

• “Digital Humanities, the Archive, and Transcription,” round table discussion, Digital Lagniappe Conference, University of Southern Mississippi, April 16, 2021 (virtual).

• “The Jane Addams Papers: Using Primary Historical Sources to Understand the Present,” (with Kathleen Ray), Council on Social Work Education, October 26, 2019.

• “Building a Digital Edition of Jane Addams’ Papers,” and “Expanding Teacher Access to the Jane Addams Digital Edition” (with Renee DeLora) Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science, November 9-10, 2018.
• “Mapping the Jane Addams Papers,” Association for Documentary Editing Annual Meeting, July 6, 2018, Olympia, WA
• “Using Metadata for Digital Editions,” and “Using Omeka to Administer Digital Projects,” at The Development of Digital Documentary Editing Platforms meeting, April 2018
• “Digitizing Jane Addams’ Papers” at NJEdgeCon, January 11, 2018
• “The Big Picture: Conceiving a Digital Edition of Jane Addams’ Papers, in Editing Jane Addams in a Digital World session at Women’s History in the Digital World, July 8, 2017, Maynooth University, Ireland; and
• “On Public Engagement” round table participant,” Association for Documentary Editing, June 24, 2017, Buffalo, NY
• “Using Omeka to Create the Jane Addams Papers Digital Edition,” panel and poster session at the Association for Documentary Editing, New Orleans, August 5, 2016.
• “Leading together: archivists and historians shaping the digital archive,”roundtable participant and chair, Organization of American Historians, Providence, RI, April 8, 2016.
• “The More You Share, the More We Grow: the Win-Win of Student Engagement, Mentorship, and Collaboration in Documentary Editing,” Roundtable participant, Joint Meeting of the Association for Documentary Editing and the Scholarly Text Society, June 17, 2015, Lincoln, Nebraska.
• “Margaret Sanger in China: The Emergence and Trajectory of the Birth Control Movement in China, 1920s-1940s,” Chair and Comment. American Historical Association, 2014. Washington, DC.
• Digitizing Margaret Sanger’s Papers, roundtable discussion participant. Women’s History in the Digital World, 2013. Bryn Mawr, PA.
• “The Sustainability of the Scholarly Edition in a Digital World,” International Symposium on XML for the Long Haul: Issues in the Long-Term Preservation of XML, Montreal, Canada, (Aug. 2, 2010). (http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol6/html/Hajo01/BalisageVol6-Hajo01.html)
• “Scholarly Editing in a Web 2.0 World” Presidential Address, Association for Documentary Editing, October 16, 2009, Springfield, Ill. (published in Documentary Editing, Vol. 31, 2010).
• “What Every Woman Should Know: Access to Birth Control Services in the U.S. Between the Wars,” American Association on the History of Medicine, 2000.