Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie

R. Gordon Hoxie

Ralph Gordon Hoxie was an American educator and college administrator who served as chancellor of Long Island University in the 1960s and founded the Library of Presidential Papers , after he resigned from LIU.Hoxie was born in Waterloo, Iowa and earned his undergraduate degree in 1940...

 Professor of American History at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. She specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

.

Kessler-Harris received her B.A.

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 from Goucher College

Goucher College

Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...

 in 1961 and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 in 1968.

Her newest book, "Gendering Labor History." collects some of her best-known essays on women and wage work. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America, won several prizes, including the Joan Kelly, Philip Taft

Philip Taft Labor History Book Award

The Philip Taft Labor History Book Award is sponsored by the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations in cooperation with the Labor and Working-Class History Association for books relating to labor history of the United States...

, Herbert Hoover, and Bancroft Prize

Bancroft Prize

The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...

s; among her other fellowships and awards, Kessler-Harris has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center

National Humanities Center

The National Humanities Center is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. It is the only major independent institute for advanced study in all fields of the humanities in the United States. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any...

 in Durham, North Carolina

Durham, North Carolina

Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...

 and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the past president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association

Labor and Working-Class History Association

Labor and Working-Class History Association is a non-profit association of academics, educators, students, and labor movement and other activists that promotes research into and publication of materials on the history of the labor movement in North and South America...

 and is president of the Organization of American Historians

Organization of American Historians

The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...

(2011-2012).

Selected works

• Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Overview (1981)
• Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States, (1982)
• A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences, (1990).
• "In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America." (2001)
• "Gendering Labor History" (2007)

External links

• Kessler-Harris Academic homepage at the Columbia University website