Edith B. Gelles

Edith B. Gelles is a senior scholar with the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. For thirty years, her research has focused on women in colonial America and especially on Abigail Adams and her family. She has written two biographies of Abigail and most recently completed Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (2009), a double biography with the Adamses' life at its center. Her one extended foray outside of this Massachusetts fold has been to colonial New York City for the life of a Jewish matron, Abigaill Levy Franks. Franks' letters to her son, which date from 1733 to 1748 and have been edited by Gelles, are the earliest surviving corpus by a woman in the colonial western world. Gelles has taught American women's history at the undergraduate and graduate levels as well as the survey of world history.

Lecture topics:

• Abigail and John Adams: Portrait of a Marriage
• "Splendid Misery": The Presidency of John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams
• The Adamses Retire
• A Vexed Friendship: Jefferson and the Adamses
• The Jewish Experience in Colonial America

Viewed Saturday, November 21, 2009