U.S. History Topics | OAH

OAH Distinguished Lectureship program 40 years 1981-2021

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Click on an OAH Lecture title to go to the author's OAH Distinguished Lecturer profile page

A

"A Female Candide": U.S. Empire, Racial Cartographies, and the Education of Grace Halsell, 1952–1986

"A Piece on Cancer While the Water Boils": Women and Their Magazines

A Black Women's History of the United States

A Chicana in China

A History of, and on, Their Own: Jewish Women in America

A Maine Midwife Goes West

A Monument to Mary: Memorializing George Washington’s Mother in Antebellum Virginia

A Society of Patriotic Ladies: The Edenton Ladies Tea Party

A Sporting Chance: Title IX and Women's History

A Transatlantic View of Women's Rights: Judith Sargent Murray and the "Vindication" of Mary Wollstonecraft

A Women's Peace Dividend: Rethinking Women's History after World War II

Abortion Care as Moral Work

Across the Divide: Women and the Twentieth Century Interracial Movement

African American Women and Electoral Politics from Reconstruction to the New Deal

African American Women's Activism in the Civil Rights Movement

African American Women's Business History: Who, What, When, How, and Why?

African American Women's History

African American Women, "Citizenship Rights," and Politics

Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

American History as Women's History

American Women and Marriage in the Twentieth Century

American Women and World War I

American Women during the Civil War

An American Woman in World War II Europe

An Epidemic, "Deformed Babies," and the Early Roots of the Modern Disability Rights Movement

Are Women People? A History of the Equal Rights Amendment

B

"But Some of Us Are Brave": Coloring Women's History and Engendering African American Studies

Behind the Scenes: Women Leaders and Conservative Movement Politics, 1950-1965

Betsy Ross: The Life Behind the Legend

Beware the Abandoned Woman: European Travelers, Native Women, and Interracial Families in Early Atlantic Travelogues

Beyond the Sex Wars: Histories of Antipornography Feminism

Black and White Women in the Old South

Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare Rights: Rethinking the Women's Movement

Black Women and Children Refugees in the Civil War

Black Women and Freedom

Black Women and the Modern Reparations Movement

Black women in the Black Power Movement

Black Women's Cultural Production and Racial Politics

Black Women's Memories: Monuments, History, and the Louisiana Sugar Plantations of Beyonce's Lemonade

Black Women, Activism, and Solidarity

Black Women, Labor, and Citizenship from the Postbellum Period to Early Twentieth Century

Black Women, the Politics of Respectability and the Urban North

Black Women’s Writings, Diasporic Politics, and Pan-African Discourses

Bodies of Evidence: Activists, Patients, and the FDA Regulation of Depo Provera

Breadwinners: Working Women in the Early Struggle for Gender Equality

Breaking the Highest Glass Ceiling: Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton, and the Future

Bridging across the Academic/Public History Chasm

Brown Sugar Melts: African American Women at the Turn of the Millennium

Building a Woman's Movement and Becoming Citizens: A California Story, 1880-1920

Building the World We Want to See: Sista II Sista and the Struggle Against Interpersonal and State Violence

C

"Class Acts": Latina Feminist Traditions, 1900-1930

"Colored Citizens": African American Women and Northern Reconstruction

Capitalists with Rooms: A Social and Economic Analysis of Prostitution in the Nineteenth-Century West

Captain Ahab Had a Wife: Sailors' Wives and Widows in Nineteenth-century America

Captured at Sea in 1863: Lucy Lord Confronts Confederate Captains and Chinese Corsairs

Coming Home: Modern Midwifery and the Controversy over Home Birth

Conservative among Progressives: Woodrow Wilson in the Golden Age of American Women's Higher Education

Creating an Elite Black Female Intelligentsia: The Case of the Forten Women

D

Daughter of the U.S.-Mexican War: The Origins of the Daughters of the American Revolution in the 1846 Invasion of Mexico

Deported But Not Defeated: Emma Goldman during World War I

Divided We Stand: The Battle over Women’s Rights and Family Values That Polarized American Politics

Doing Women's History in Public: Using Tangible Resources to Enliven our Understanding

Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation

Dolley Madison: A Case Study of Female Leadership in the Early Republic

Domestic Workers Organize, Past and Present

Doris Miller, Hero of Pearl Harbor and Catalyst of the Civil Rights Movement

Dreaming Women's Equality: Past and Present Possibilities

E

'East Unites with West': African American Women's Visions of Japan in the Twentieth Century

Partus Sequitur Ventrum: Slave Law and the Histories of Women in Slavery

Ecstatic Utopians: The Radical Women's Liberation Movement, 1960-1980

Eleanor Roosevelt, Women, and Power

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kim Davis, and the Changing Meaning of "Religious Freedom"

Ella Baker: The Woman who Invented the Civil Rights Movement

F

Federal Mothers: What Happened When Women Went to Work in the U.S. Indian Service

Female Slave Resistance in the Antebellum South

Feminism and the Civil Rights Revolution

Feminists, Social Constructivists, and Well-Meaning War Criminals: Redefining American Science in the 1970s

Fifty Years of Feminism: Where Have We Come from since the 1960s? Where Are We Going?

Fighting over Susan B. Anthony: A Modern-Day Abortion Controversy

Fine, Strong Women

For the Many: America's Progressive Politics and the Global Women Who Made It

Founding Mothers: How Women Shaped the American Revolution

Free Them All: African American Women Exiles in Cuba

From One Generation to Another: Mothers, Daughters, and Women's History

From Sophie Tucker to Sarah Silverman: The Subversive Tradition of Jewish Women Comedians

From Widow to Welfare Queen: Race and the Transformation of Economic Support for Poor Women

G

Generations of Protest: Women and the Struggle for Puerto Rico's Independence

Geographies of Pain and Pleasure: Black Women in Segregated New Orleans

Gertrude Stein, Race, and the New Woman

Gloria Richardson

God, Race, and Religion: Black Women and Africa

H

"How Powerful is the Ideal, Sweeping across Space and Time": Emma Goldman and Anarchist Precedents to the Global Occupy Movements

Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso

Hastening the Homecoming: Women as Workers, Consumers, and Homemakers in World War II

Heroes and Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement

High Rolls v. Homespun

History, Memoir, Maternity

Home, Cooking: The Uses of Women's History in Contemporary Food Politics

I

"I'm Still Surviving": Toward a Women's History of HIV/AIDS

Images of Diverse Womanhood in Late Twentieth-Century Urban America: The Case of Latasha Harlins, Soon Ja Du, and Joyce Karlin

Intimate Strategies: Civil War Military Commanders and Their Wives

Is Birth Control Moral? Margaret Sanger and Changing Views of Contraception

J

Jeannette Rankin: Her Visible and Invisible Legacy

Judy Chicago, the Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists

L

Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk

Learning to Stand and Speak: Educating Women for Public Life

Lincoln and the Widow Bixby

Losing the Battle but Winning the War: Sandra Day O’Connor, Ronald Reagan, and the Rise of the New Right

Low-Income Black Women's Struggles for Justice

M

"Mother of All the Living": Motherhood, Religion, and Political Culture at the Ojibwe Village of Fond du Lac, 1835–1839

#MeToo, Carry Nation, and Why It’s Time to Revisit the History of the Temperance Movement

Mainstreams and Cutting Edges: Women and the Grand Narrative of U.S. History

Modesta Avila and Other Women on the Borderlands

Mother Is A Verb: Unconventional Histories of the American Past

Mrs. Dred Scott

Mrs. Madison's War: Dolley Madison and the War of 1812

Mrs. Maggie Walker and Her Independent Order: African Americans Defy Jim Crow

N

"No Crystal Stair": Three Centuries of Black Women's Work in America, 1619–2019

Natalie Scott of New Orleans: Race and Gender on the Western Front

National Parks and Historic Sites: American History

Native American New Women in the Jazz Age

Neoliberalism, Domestic Work, and New Models of Labor Organizing

No More Miss America? The Pageant Turns 100

No Permanent Waves: Reimagining Histories of U.S. Feminism

Not Just the Facts: Approaches to the History of Women and Gender

Not Your Father's Liberty: Reproductive Freedom and the Fourteenth Amendment

Not Your Grandmother's Grandmother: Changes in Popular Culture Images of the American Grandmother in the Twentieth Century

O

Object Lessons: Rewriting the History of Clothing and Community in Federal New England

Our Secret Society: Black Women and Racial Justice Philanthropy

P

"Perpetually Propagating Patriarchs": Estelle Lawton Lindsey and the Sensational Journalism in the 1910s Los Angeles Record

Passion, Politics, and Free Expression: The Legacy of Emma Goldman

Patsy for President: Patsy Takemoto Mink, Cold War Liberalism, and the Viet Nam War

Peggy Shippen Arnold and Revolutionary America

Pelagie Farribault's Island: Marriage and the American State in Early Nineteenth-Century Dakota Country

Performing "Civic Decency": The Black Women and Girls who Desegregated American Schools

Power, Place and Identity: Women in Public, 1890-1930

Practicing Public History: Feminist Projects and Prospects

Puerto Rican Women's Feminism in New York City and Beyond

Q

Quaker Wives and Cape Horn Widows: Colonial Women in New England Seaports

R

Reading "Our Bodies, Ourselves": Rethinking Women's Health and Second-Wave Feminism

Reading Abigail Adams's Mail

Ready to Turn the World Upside Down: Radical Feminism and the Politics of Jewish Identity

Rearing Black Girls for Leadership during the Jim Crow Era

Reassessing Eugenic Sterilization: The Case of North Carolina

Reexamining the Pelvic: Medical Education and the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Remembering the Ladies in the Story of the Founding

Rethinking Nina Simone as an Icon in an Age of Black Lives Matter Activism

Rethinking the "Feminine Mystique": American Women in the 1950s

Rosa Parks, the Radical

S

"Single Girl, Married Girl": Feminism in Country Music

"Southern Horrors": Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching in the American South

Seamstresses and Whores: Working Women and Women's Work in the Industrial Century

Searching for Mother Jones

Sexy from the Start: Female Sexuality and the Second Wave of Feminism

Sister Sailors and Hen Frigates: American Women at Sea in the Age of Sail

Sisters and Rebels: Inventing Modern Lives from the Shadow of the Confederacy to the Great American Inquisition

Slaveholding Mistresses and Enslaved Women in the Plantation Household

Slavery, Civil War, and the Emancipation of Motherhood

Society Ladies and Political Parties: A Study in American Women's History

Solving the Servant Problem: Domestic Service and Labor Reform during the Progressive Era

Southern Women on the Left

Suffrage at 100: Women's Suffrage Activism since 1920

T

"The Importance of Being Chisholm": Race, Gender, and Politics in the Life of Shirley Chisholm

"The Maid and Mr. Charlie": Black Women and Sexual Violence in the Jim Crow South

"The Most Hated Woman in America": Madalyn Murray O'Hair's Atheist Crusade Against Religion

"Too Wretched for Women": Agriculture, Modernization, and Gender at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

The "New Woman" in the 1920s

The 1950s: Feminine Mystique or Feminist Movement?

The Afterlives of Josephine Baker

The Black Women Intellectuals Who Revolutionized Black Power

The Challenge of Feminist Biography

The Challenges and Opportunities of Teaching Women's History

The Dynamics of Modern Marriage in the United States and Beyond

The First Ladies during the Civil War

The Gender of Poverty: How Women Overseas Became the Deserving Poor

The Great White Mother: Maternalism and Settler Colonialism in the American West and Australia, 1880–1940

The Historical Legacy of American Jewish Mothers

The History of Women's Freedom Struggles in the United States

The Impact of Racial and Sexual Politics on Women's History

The Impact of the Women's Movement on Athletes and Athletics

The Invisible Battle: Women at Gettysburg, 1863

The Long View: Birth Control and Reproduction in America since the Seventeenth Century

The Many Lives of Mary Lincoln

The Montgomery Bus Boycott as a Women's Movement for Dignity

The Politics of Enslaved Women's Self-Liberation

The Real Sister Act: Confronting the Uneasy History of Racial Segregation and Exclusion in Female Religious Life

The Real Story of Josefina Montoya, American Girl: Women, Property, and Conquest on the Mexican Frontier

The Rise of the Modern First Lady: Edith Kermit Roosevelt, a Victorian Modern in the White House

The Role of Women in Twentieth-Century Immigration Strategies

The Slave Female World of Sally Hemings

The Social Gospel and Women's Interracial Coalitions

The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America

The U.S. Congressional Women's Tour of China: Women's Internationalism and Cold War Diplomacy

The Woman behind J. P. Morgan's Library: Belle da Costa Greene in the Age of Collecting

The Woman: Clare Boothe Luce and the Politics of Conversion

The Women Jefferson Loved

The Women's Committee: International Labor, Gender, and the Cold War

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom at 100

To Dream of Becoming a Judith: The Jewish Roots of Emma Goldman's Anarchism

“This Is Our Message”: How Women’s Leadership Built the New Christian Right

U

U.S. Women's Legal Status

Understanding and Interpreting a Life: Helen Gurley Brown

V

Virginia Foster Durr: From Southern Belle to Radical Democrat

W

We Are a College at War: American Women in World War II

Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

What is Work? Who is a Worker? Homeworkers, Household Workers, and Poor Single Mothers

What Women Want: A Comparison of the Way Black and White Women Approach Postmodern America

What's Laundry Got to Do with It?

When Abortion Was a Crime: The American Past, and Present?

Who Was a Suffragist? A More Diverse View

Why Women's Movements Matter

Witches Everywhere: Witchcraft in the Early Modern World

Woman of Two Worlds: Anna Chennault, Informal Diplomacy, and U.S.-Asian Relations

Women and Early Industrialization: The Lowell Example

Women and Feminism in the Trump Era

Women and Modern Conservatism

Women and Oklahoma Statehood

Women and the All-Volunteer Force

Women and the American Civil War

Women and the Civil Rights Movement: A History of Feminism in Black Freedom Struggles

Women and the Civil War "Homefronts"

Women and the Rise of the Surveillance State in the Progressive Era

Women and the West

Women and the Work of Empire: Housewives, Servants, and Others in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904–1914

Women before the Bar: Snapshots of Early American Courtrooms

Women in the Civil War

Women in the Civil War South: Battle on the Homefront

Women on the Margins of Freedom in the Early American South

Women's Associations and Civil War Memory

Women's Labors as the World's Work: The Transnational Reach of U.S. Labor Feminism

Women's Legal History

Women's Rights and Reproductive Justice

Women, Religion, and Agency: Some Reflections on Writing American Women's Religious History

Women, World War I, and the Emergence of Modern America

Women’s History as American History

Work, Women, and Wobblies: The IWW Strikes in Colorado's Coal Fields, 1927

Y

"You Just Had to Depend on Yourself": Self-Reliance and the Healing Work of Enslaved Women

You Are What You Shop: Women Against the Sweatshop, Past and Present

4

45 Years of Arguing about Reproduction Control