Gerda Lerner
Encyclopedia
Gerda Lerner is a historian, author and teacher. She is a professor emerita
of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
and a visiting scholar at Duke University
. She wrote the screenplay for Carl Lerner’s film Black Like Me
in 1966.
Lerner is one of the founders of the fields of women's history and African-American history and is a former president of the Organization of American Historians
. Lerner has played a key role in the development of women’s history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women’s history course at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University
(1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College
from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and since 1980 as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
, Kronstein joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and spent six weeks, including her eighteenth birthday, in an Austrian jail. Her family was able to escape from Austria and persecution by the Nazis; Kronstein, with the help of a young socialist lover, Bobby Jensen, immigrated to the United States in 1939.
(CPUSA). In the 1940s she was active in the Congress of American Women (CAW, a women's group concerned with economic and social issues), helping to found the Los Angeles chapter in 1946. In 1951, she collaborated with poet Eve Merriam on a musical, The Singing of Women. Her novel, No Farewell, appeared in 1955; with her husband, she wrote the script for Black Like Me. Committed Communists, the Lerners were involved in numerous grassroots activities involving trade unionism, civil rights, and anti-militarism; they struggled against McCarthyism, especially the Hollywood blacklist. Lerner returned to school in the late 1950s, receiving a B.A. from the New School for Social Research in 1963 and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1966; her dissertation became her first publication, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967). She taught at Long Island University in Brooklyn and at Sarah Lawrence College, where she initiated an influential master's program in women's history in 1972. In 1980, Lerner created the nation's first Ph.D. program in women's history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she became professor emerita. Lerner was among the first to bring a consciously feminist lens to the study of history, producing enormously influential essays and books. Among her most important works are the documentary anthologies, Black Women in White America (1972) and The Female Experience (1976); the essay collections, The Majority Finds Its Past (1979) and Why History Matters (1997); The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) and The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993). She published Fireweed: A Political Autobiography in 2002. Lerner was a founding member of the National Organization for Women and the first woman in 50 years to become president of the Organization of American Historians, which named the Gerda Lerner-Ann Scott Prize for the best women's history dissertation in her honor. She was a local and national leader in the organization for a short period. Lerner began her higher education while in her 40s, when her own children were in college, earning an A.B. from the New School for Social Research in 1963 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University
in 1965 and 1966 respectively. The Lerners subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where Carl went to work in the film industry and went on to become a successful filmmaker. The Lerners would remain together until Carl’s death in 1976.
Lerner began fighting for women's history to become a legitimate field when she was a student at Columbia. During her time in graduate school, she noted that, "they teach me all these great names, all these famous names, and they teach me about a world in which women don't exist." Her dissertation on women's history, completed in 1966, demonstrated how the women's movement had its roots in slavery. In 1968 Lerner became a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. While there Lerner started the first program to offer a graduate degree in women's history. Between the 1960's and 1970's, Lerner published numerous books and articles to help further the recognition of women's history as a field of study. One of these articles, "The Lady and the Mill Girl" was about class differences and their importance in early nineteenth century to women's history. In 1980 Lerner became a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin and started yet another graduate program in women's history. While at the University of Wisconsin, Lerner studied ancient history in search for the root causes of women's oppression. Her work in this study lead to her winning the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Prize in 1986. The Organization of American Historians http://www.oah.org/, the largest society devoted to the study of American History, elected Lerner as president in the 1980's. As an educational director, she helped make women's history accesible to many, including leaders of women's organizations and high school teachers. Lerner is considered a godmother of women's history http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/20/books/making-history-her-story-too.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed the World, Deborah G. Felder and Diana Rosen. New York: Citadel Press (Kensington Publishing), 2003. (Pages 216-220.)
Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation, Kate Weigand. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. (Multiple references, indexed.)
Emerita
Emerita may refer to:*Emerita , a genus of crustacean*Emerita Augusta, an ancient city of Spain* Saint Emerita, 3rd century martyr. See Digna and Emerita...
of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
and a visiting scholar at Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
. She wrote the screenplay for Carl Lerner’s film Black Like Me
Black Like Me (film)
Black Like Me is a 1964 American drama film co-written and directed by Carl Lerner, based on the book of the same name. The film stars James Whitmore, Sorrell Booke, and Roscoe Lee Browne.-Plot:...
in 1966.
Lerner is one of the founders of the fields of women's history and African-American history and is a former 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...
. Lerner has played a key role in the development of women’s history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women’s history course at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University
Long Island University
Long Island University is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution of higher education in the U.S. state of New York.-History:...
(1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and since 1980 as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Early Life
Lerner was born Gerda Kronstein in Vienna, Austria on April 30, 1920, the first child of Ilona and Robert Kronstein, an affluent Jewish couple. Her father was a pharmacist, her mother an artist. Following the AnschlussAnschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
, Kronstein joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and spent six weeks, including her eighteenth birthday, in an Austrian jail. Her family was able to escape from Austria and persecution by the Nazis; Kronstein, with the help of a young socialist lover, Bobby Jensen, immigrated to the United States in 1939.
Personal Life
When Lerner first moved to New York, she worked as a waitress, salesgirl, office clerk, and x-ray technician, all the while writing fiction and poetry; she published two short stories providing a first-person account of the horrors of Nazi occupation. After her divorce with Jensen, she met and married Carl Lerner, a young theatre director who was active with the Communist Party USACommunist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
(CPUSA). In the 1940s she was active in the Congress of American Women (CAW, a women's group concerned with economic and social issues), helping to found the Los Angeles chapter in 1946. In 1951, she collaborated with poet Eve Merriam on a musical, The Singing of Women. Her novel, No Farewell, appeared in 1955; with her husband, she wrote the script for Black Like Me. Committed Communists, the Lerners were involved in numerous grassroots activities involving trade unionism, civil rights, and anti-militarism; they struggled against McCarthyism, especially the Hollywood blacklist. Lerner returned to school in the late 1950s, receiving a B.A. from the New School for Social Research in 1963 and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1966; her dissertation became her first publication, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels Against Slavery (1967). She taught at Long Island University in Brooklyn and at Sarah Lawrence College, where she initiated an influential master's program in women's history in 1972. In 1980, Lerner created the nation's first Ph.D. program in women's history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she became professor emerita. Lerner was among the first to bring a consciously feminist lens to the study of history, producing enormously influential essays and books. Among her most important works are the documentary anthologies, Black Women in White America (1972) and The Female Experience (1976); the essay collections, The Majority Finds Its Past (1979) and Why History Matters (1997); The Creation of Patriarchy (1986) and The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993). She published Fireweed: A Political Autobiography in 2002. Lerner was a founding member of the National Organization for Women and the first woman in 50 years to become president of the Organization of American Historians, which named the Gerda Lerner-Ann Scott Prize for the best women's history dissertation in her honor. She was a local and national leader in the organization for a short period. Lerner began her higher education while in her 40s, when her own children were in college, earning an A.B. from the New School for Social Research in 1963 and an M.A. and Ph.D. from 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 1965 and 1966 respectively. The Lerners subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where Carl went to work in the film industry and went on to become a successful filmmaker. The Lerners would remain together until Carl’s death in 1976.
Activism
Gerda Lerner once said, "women's lack of knowledge of our own history of struggle and achievement has been one of the major means of keeping us subordinate."Lerner began fighting for women's history to become a legitimate field when she was a student at Columbia. During her time in graduate school, she noted that, "they teach me all these great names, all these famous names, and they teach me about a world in which women don't exist." Her dissertation on women's history, completed in 1966, demonstrated how the women's movement had its roots in slavery. In 1968 Lerner became a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. While there Lerner started the first program to offer a graduate degree in women's history. Between the 1960's and 1970's, Lerner published numerous books and articles to help further the recognition of women's history as a field of study. One of these articles, "The Lady and the Mill Girl" was about class differences and their importance in early nineteenth century to women's history. In 1980 Lerner became a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin and started yet another graduate program in women's history. While at the University of Wisconsin, Lerner studied ancient history in search for the root causes of women's oppression. Her work in this study lead to her winning the American Historical Association's Joan Kelly Prize in 1986. The Organization of American Historians http://www.oah.org/, the largest society devoted to the study of American History, elected Lerner as president in the 1980's. As an educational director, she helped make women's history accesible to many, including leaders of women's organizations and high school teachers. Lerner is considered a godmother of women's history http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/20/books/making-history-her-story-too.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
Selected works
"Black Women in White America: A Documentary History'" was published in 1972. It chronicles 350 years of black women being treated as property and describes the long range effects of the slave past. It was one of the first books to detail the contributions of black women in women's history. "The Creation of Feminist Consciousness'" was published in 1993. The book traces the roots of patriarchal dominance back to two millennia. In The Creation of Patriarchy, Volume One of Women and History, Lerner ventures into prehistory, attempting to trace the roots of patriarchal dominance. Lerner implements historical, archeological, literary, and artistic evidence for the idea that patriarchy is a cultural construct. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to 1870 is the second volume of Women and History. In this book, Lerner reviews European culture from the seventh century through the nineteenth century, showing the limitations imposed by a male-dominated culture and the sporadic attempt to resist that domination. She examines in detail the educational deprivation of women, their isolation from many of the traditions of their societies, and the expressive outlet many women have found through writing. "Fireweed: A Political Autobiography'" was published in 2003. Fireweed captures the life story of Gerda Lerner personally and politically. She writes about her time in Vienna where she suffered suffered anti-Semitism, imprisonment, deportation, immigration, and McCarthyism along with her strained relationship with her mother. Fireweed: A Political Autobiography is Lerner's detailed documentation of her years from childhood to 1958 when she first began her studies at the New School for Social Research in New York. She recalls in "Beginnings" starvation and imprisonment in Austria and her family's survival, due in part to the fact that her father had opened a branch of the family business in Liechtenstein, where he stayed. Her mother moved to France, and Lerner's sister relocated to Israel. Lerner came to the United States at the age of eighteen under the sponsorship of the family of the young man she would marry. The marriage failed, and Lerner survived as a typical immigrant, working for minimum wage. She met Carl, and they both obtained divorces in Reno so that they could marry, then moved from New York to Hollywood, where Carl's career in film blossomed. For her works Lerner has received many awards including the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Historical Writing of the Society of American Historians and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Special Book Award.Screenplays
- Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom (1957)
- Black Like Me (1964)
- Home for Easter (n.d.)
Books
- No Farewell (1955) an autobiographical novel
- The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Rebels against Authority (1967)
- The Woman in American History [ed.] (1971)
- The Female Experience: An American Documentary (1976)
- A Death of One's Own (1978/2006)
- The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (1979)
- Teaching Women's History (1981)
- Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey (1982)
- The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)
- Scholarship in Women's History Rediscovered & New (1994)
- Why History Matters (1997)
Further reading
American Women Historians, 1700s-1990s: A Biographical Dictionary, Jennifer Scanlon and Shaaron Cosner. Westport, Connecticut, and London: Greenwood Press, 1996. (Pages 144-146.)Fifty Jewish Women Who Changed the World, Deborah G. Felder and Diana Rosen. New York: Citadel Press (Kensington Publishing), 2003. (Pages 216-220.)
Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation, Kate Weigand. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. (Multiple references, indexed.)