About

Advisors

William Chafe

Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History, Duke University

William Chafe is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History at Duke University inDurham, NC. Chafe's research interests focus on gender and racial equality. His publications include: Bill and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal (2012); The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890 to 2008 (2008);The Unfinished Journey: American Since World War II (Oxford University Press, 2006); Private Lives/Public Consequences: Personality and Politics in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2005); Never Stop Running (Princeton University Press, 1998); The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (Oxford University Press, 1991); Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1981).  [Wikipedia]


Gail Collins

Columnist & former Editorial Editor, New York Times

Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times’s editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish her book: “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.” She returned to The Times as a columnist in July 2007. [New York Times]


Nancy Cott

Director of The Schlesinger Library and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and, Harvard University

Nancy F. Cott became the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University in 2002. Between 1975 and 2001, she taught at Yale University, beginning as an assistant professor and departing as the Sterling Professor of History and American Studies. At Yale, she was among the founders of the women’s studies program in the late 1970s and chaired that program from 1980 to 1987; she chaired the American studies program from 1994 to 1997 and was director of the Division of the Humanities between 1999 and 2001. At Harvard, she teaches courses in US history focusing on gender issues. (Radcliffe.Harvard.edu)

Sara Evans

Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Minnesota

Sara Evans is Regents Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History Emerita at the University of Minnesota. Her research has focused on the history of American feminism as a social movement and its relationship to a variety of related movements for equal rights.  Her books include Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America, and Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at Century’s End. She has served as Chair of the Department of History and Director of the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies; in editorial positions with Feminist Studies and the Journal of American History; and has received grants from the ACLS, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Kellogg Foundation and the Bush Foundation.  She received the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Medal in 1998, the President’s Award for Outstanding Service in 1999, and the University of Minnesota Outstanding Teaching Award in Graduate and Post-Baccalaureate Education in 2003. (Unfinished2012.com)

Paula Giddings

E.A. Woodson 1922 Professor, African American Studies, Smith College


Paula Giddings, a writer, historian, and teacher, is best known for her authoritative social and political history of African-American women, When and Where I Enter(1985), and her history of the Black sorority Delta Signa Theta. A former book editor and journalist, Giddings has written extensively on political issues in both the popular press and scholarly journals. She was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar at Spelman College; held the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies at Douglass College/Rutgers University, and taught at Princeton and Duke Universities before becoming Professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College. (Women’s World)

Linda Gordon

Professor of History, New York University

Linda Gordon, a professor of history at New York University, is the author of numerous books, including Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America, and The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, which received the Bancroft Prize and the Beveridge Prize in 1989. (Press.uillinois.edu)
 

Mary Ting Yi Lui

Associate Professor of History and American Studies, Yale University

Mary Lui is Associate Professor of American Studies and History. Her primary research interests include: Asian American history, urban history, women and gender studies, and public history. She is the author of The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City (Princeton University Press, 2005), the 2007 co-winner of the best book prize for history from the Association of Asian American Studies. The book uses a 1909 unsolved murder case to examine race, gender, and interracial sexual relations in the cultural, social and spatial formation of New York City Chinatown from 1870-1920. She is currently working on a new book titled, Making Model Minorities: Asian Americans, Race, and Citizenship in Cold War America at Home and Abroad, that examines the history of Asian American and U.S. cultural diplomacy in Asia in the early years of the Cold War. (Yale.edu)
 


Nancy MacLean

Arts and Sciences Professor of History, Duke University

Nancy MacLean is a leading historian of the United States in the twentieth century. She is currently Arts and Sciences Professor of History at Duke University, where she teaches courses on the United States since 1945 and American social movement and public policy history. Before joining the faculty at Duke in 2010, she taught at Northwestern University for many years, where she served as department chair from 2006-2009 and was Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities. Her award-winning scholarship focuses on the role of social movements, right and left, in changing American culture and policy. (nancymaclean.com)



Amy Richards

Writer & Feminist Activist; co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation

As a cofounder of the Third Wave Foundation and coauthor of Manifesta (FSG, 2000) and Grassroots (FSG, 2005), Amy Richards is one of the foremost leaders of the Third Wave feminist movement today. Her writing and her organizing have made an indelible impact on the lives of young women. She is also the cofounder of the feminist speakers’ bureau Soapbox and the voice behind “Ask Amy,” the online advice column she launched at feminist.com. She lives in New York City with her family.  (Macmillan.com)
 


Virgina Sanchez-Korrol

Professor Emeritus, Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Historian Virginia Sánchez Korrol is author of From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (1994), coauthor with Marysa Navarro of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (1999); and coeditor with Vicki L. Ruiz of Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography and Community (2005) and the award-winning Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (2006). She consults on museum exhibits, television documentaries, and educational projects, and serves on the boards of Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage and the New York Academy of History. She directs Latinas in History, an interactive project for pre-collegiate students, and researches New York Latinas in the Antillean independence movement.
 


Barbara Smith

Writer & Feminist Activist; Council Member, City of Albany


Barbara Smith (born in December 16, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio)[1] is an Americanlesbian feminist[2] who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as a critic, teacher, lecturer, author, scholar, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities over the last twenty five years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditionsand The Nation. Barbara has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer. 

Gloria Steinem

Writer & Feminist Activist

Gloria Steinem is an American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader of, and media spokeswoman for, the women's liberation movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. She became a freelance writer after college and grew more and more engaged in the women's movement and feminism. She helped create both New York and Ms. magazines, helped form the National Women's Political Caucus, and is the author of many books and essays. A breast cancer survivor, Steinem celebrated her 75th birthday in 2009.  (Biography.com)