Lisa G. Materson
Lisa G. Materson is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and a specialist in U.S. women's political history. She is the author of For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics in Illinois, 1877–1932 (2009), which analyzes black women's involvement in southern, midwestern, and national politics in order to undermine institutionalized racism. She is currently completing Within the Regime, Against the Regime: Ruth Reynolds and the Battle for Puerto Rico’s Independence. The book combines a feminist biography of Ruth Reynolds (1916-1989) with a history of her multiple activist communities to examine the gendered and transnational history of the Puerto Rican independence movement. Materson is also co-editor, with Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, of The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History (2018), and the author of articles on Puerto Rican women's independence activism and African American women's internationalism.