KESSLER-HARRIS, Alice 1941-

PERSONAL: Born June 2, 1941, in Leicester, England; immigrated to the United States, 1955; daughter of Zoltan and Ilona (Elefant) Kessler; married Jay Evans Harris, August 28, 1960 (divorced, 1972); married Bertram Silverman, January 22, 1982; children: (first marriage) Ilona Kay; stepchildren: Julie and Devorah. Education: Goucher College, B.A. (cum laude), 1961; Rutgers University, M.A., 1963, Ph.D., 1968. Hobbies and other interests: Cooking, tennis, theater, gardening.

ADDRESSES: Home—610 West 116th St., New York, NY 10027. Office—Department of History, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Teacher at public schools in Baltimore, MD, 1961-62; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, assistant instructor at Douglass College, 1964-65; Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, assistant professor, 1968-73, associate professor, 1976-81, professor of history, 1981-88, co-director of Center for the Study of Work and Leisure, 1976-88; Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, professor of history and women's studies and director of Women's Studies Program, 1974-76; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, professor of history, 1988-90; Rutgers University, professor of history, 1990-1999, director of Women's Studies Program, 1990-95; Columbia University, New York, NY, professor of history, 1999-2001, Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History, 2001—. University of Warwick, visiting senior lecturer, 1979-80; State University of New York at Binghamton, visiting professor, 1985; New School for Social Research, research associate at Center for Studies of Social Change, 1989-90; Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, visiting fellow, 1991; Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway, research associate, 1995-96; Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, fellow, 1997; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, fellow, 2001-02. Columbia University, member of Seminar in American Civilization, 1971—, member of Seminar on Women in Society, 1975—, chair, 1983-84. Pulitzer Prize in History, member of nominating committee, 1987. Consultant to organizations.

MEMBER: American Association of University Professors, American Historical Association (chair, committee on women historians, 1984-86), Organization of American Historians, American Studies Association (member of executive council, 1973-78; chair of international committee, 1982-83; president, 1990-91), American Civil Liberties Union (member of academic freedom committee, 1971-77), American Council of Learned Societies (reader in fellowship program, 1988), Coordinating Committee of Women in the Historical Profession, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, New York State Council for the Humanities (member of Speakers' Bureau, 1982—).

AWARDS, HONORS: Grants from Danforth Foundation Auxiliary, 1962-63, Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation, 1973-74, and American Philosophical Society, 1973-74; fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1976-77, 1985-86; Bunting Institute fellow, Radcliffe College, 1977; Philip Taft Prize for the best book in labor history, 1982, for Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the U.S.; travel grant from American Council of Learned Societies, 1986; fellow, Rockefeller Foundation, 1988-89, and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1989-90; John B. Commerford Award for Labor Education, 1991; LL. D., Goucher College, 1991; D.Lett., Uppsala University, 1995; Fulbright award for Australia and New Zealand, 1995; Bancroft Prize, and Herbert Hoover Book Award, both 2002, both for In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Blanche Cook and Ronald Radosh) Past Imperfect: Alternative Essays in American History, Random House (New York, NY), 1972.

(Author of introduction) William Ladd, On the Duty of Females to Promote the Cause of Peace, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1972.

(Author of introduction) George Cone Beckwith, The Peace Manual; or, War and Its Remedies, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1972.

(Author of introduction) Theodore Parker, Sermon of War, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1973.

(Author of introduction) Ronald Grele, editor, Envelopes of Sound: Six Practitioners Discuss the Theory and Method of Oral History, Precedent Publishing (Chicago, IL), 1975, revised edition, 1985.

(Author of introduction) Anzia Yezierska, Bread Givers, Braziller (New York, NY), 1975.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Open Cage: An Anzia Yezierska Collection, Persea Books (New York, NY), 1979.

Women Have Always Worked, Feminist Press (Old Westbury, NY), 1980.

Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the U.S., Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 1982.

(Coauthor of introduction) Joan Kelly, Women, History and Theory, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1984.

(Editor, with Judith Friedlander, Blanche Cook, and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg) Women in Culture and Politics: A Century of Change, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1986.

(Editor, with William McBrien) Faith of a Woman Writer: Essays in Twentieth-Century Literature, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1988.

(Editor, with Carroll Moody) Perspectives on American Labor History: The Problem of Synthesis, Northern Illinois University Press (DeKalb, IL), 1990.

A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences, University Press of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), 1990.

(Editor, with Ulla Wikander and Jane Lewis) Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, Australia, and the United States, 1880-1920, University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1995.

(Editor, with Linda Kerber and Kathryn Sklar) U.S. History As Women's History, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1996.

In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, Oxford University Press (Oxford, England), 2001.

Contributor to books, including The Study of American History, Volume 2, edited by Ernest Hohlnitz, Dushkin (Guilford, CT), 1974; Cooperative History of the United States, Dushkin (Guilford, CT), 1974; Labor Market Segmentation, edited by Richard Edwards and others, Lexington Books (Lexington, MA), 1975; Liberating Women's History: Theoretical and Critical Essays, edited by Berenice Carroll, University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1976; Class, Sex and the Woman Worker, edited by Milton Cantor and Bruce Laurie, Greenwood Press, 1977; American Ethnic Groups, edited by Thomas Sowell, Urban Institute (Washington, DC), 1978; American Character and Culture, edited by John Hague, revised edition, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1979; A Heritage of Her Own, edited by Nancy Cott and Elizabeth Pleck, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1979; Notable American Women (supplement), edited by Barbara Sicherman, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1979; Report from the Front Lines, edited by Wendy Chavkin, Monthly Review Press (New York, NY), 1984; Women, Work and Protest: A Century of Women's Labor History, edited by Ruth Milkman, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985; Woman and Work: An Annual Review, edited by Laurie Larwood, and others, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1985; Sisters and Solidarity: Workers Education for Women, 1914-1980, edited by Joyce Kornbluh and Mary Frederickson, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1985; Women, Households, and the Economy, edited by Lourdes Beneria and Catharine R. Stimpson, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1987; Labor Leaders in America, edited by Melvyn Dubovsky and Warren Van Tine, University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1987; Class and the Feminist Imagination, edited by Karen Hansen and Ilene Philipson, Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1989; and Days of Destiny: Crossroads in American History, edited by James McPherson and Alan Brinkley, [New York, NY], 2001.

Coeditor of the series "Working Class in American History," University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 1985—. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Science and Society, Signs, Ms., Reviews in American History, Women's Review of Books, Nation, and New York Times Book Review. Member of editorial board, Labor History, 1983-98, Journal of American History, 1985-88, Feminist Studies, Women and History, and Gender and History.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Gender and Culture: ReViewing the Historical Paradigm, for University of North Carolina Press; a political biography on Lillian Hellman.

SIDELIGHTS: Among historian Alice Kessler-Harris's most important contributions is the demonstration of the inseparability of United States labor history from women's history. Through her research and analysis, she has delineated changing attitudes toward women wage earners and the subsequent results of these attitudes as shown in legislation and social policy.

Kessler-Harris has published extensively. She is the editor and author of several books and has many articles and essays to her credit. Her teaching career has been active. She has taught at colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. She is now on the history faculty of Columbia University. In addition to her roles as teacher and writer, she participated in the development of the Labor College for District 65 of the United Auto Workers and was instrumental in building the women's studies program at Rutgers University.

Kessler-Harris's book In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, argues that women cannot participate fully in the political process until they are economically independent. Through careful examination of the tax structure and social policies from the 1930s to the middle of the 1970s, the author shows how policies constructed to protect women actually denied them full economic citizenship by being based on deeply ingrained attitudes about women in the working world. Dale Farris, reviewing the work in Library Journal, felt that Kessler-Harris "succeeds in showing how gender has shaped the rules by which we live." Other than this main topic of discussion, a Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded that In Pursuit of Equity "is also a refreshingly compact and useful primer on [fifty] years of employment legislation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, August, 2001, David Rouse, review of In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, p. 2059.

Library Journal, December, 2001, Dale Farris, review of In Pursuit of Equity, p. 144.

Nation, July 22, 2002, Linda Gordon, review of In Pursuit of Equity, pp. 31-34.

Publishers Weekly, October 29, 2001, review of In Pursuit of Equity, p. 56.

Reference Services Review, Volume 26, review of Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the U.S., p. 33.

Women's Review of Books, January, 2002, Ruth Sidel, review of In Pursuit of Equity, pp. 15-17.