Rosenberg, Rosalind 1946–

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Rosenberg, Rosalind 1946–

PERSONAL: Born June 15, 1946, in Boston, MA; daughter of Thomas R. (a professor of business administration) and Helen (a nurse; maiden name, Adams) Navin; married John Rosenberg, September 1, 1967 (divorced, 1971); married Gerald Rosenberg (a lawyer), August 13, 1971; children: Clifford, Nicholas. Education: Stanford University, B.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Home—1192 Park Ave., New York, NY 10028. Office—History Department, Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, 420 Lehman Hall, New York, NY 10027. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, historian, and educator. Columbia University, New York, NY, assistant professor of history, 1974–82; Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, assistant professor of history, 1982–84; Barnard College, New York, NY, associate professor, 1984–92, professor of American history, 1992–.

MEMBER: American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Society of American Historians, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1968; Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians, 1983, for Beyond Separate Spheres.

WRITINGS:

Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1982.

Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1992.

Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think about Sex and Politics, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Rosalind Rosenberg is a writer, educator, and historian at Barnard College in New York, NY. Her first book, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism, was the winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, given by the Organization of American Historians. The book provides a biographical account of several female scientists who founded the modern scientific study of the differences between males and females. Rosenberg begins her story in the Victorian era, when it was commonly and widely accepted that men and women lived within distinct and separate spheres. Then, for example, it was thought that the public sphere was occupied solely by men, and that if a woman tried to enter the public arena, it would be a violation of her fundamental nature. With this restrictive atmosphere as her stepping-off point, Rosenberg describes how a number of women's scholars came to rebel against the idea of the separate spheres, and how feminist scholarship developed through the works of college attendees, graduate students, social scientists, and prominent women of science such as Margaret Mead. "The specific discovery these women made, Rosenberg insists, is the idea of sexual equality," stated reviewer Hamilton Cravens in Science. "This is an interesting account, or, more precisely, series of vignettes, nicely written, solidly researched, and intelligently presented," commented Cravens. "The book is itself an excellent example of feminist scholarship." Cravens concluded that "by any reasonable standard this is a good book on an important topic. It deserves the widest possible readership."

Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century centers on historical perspectives of women who found themselves in conflict with society's expecta-tions of them, divided between domesticity and the appeal of productive, paid labor in the workforce. The book also explores how women have, at times of social change, sometimes been divided even among themselves. Rosenberg looks at issues of women's differences from men and the unavoidable distinctions imposed by race, religion, and class, and puts them into a context that addresses larger issues in women's history. She offers biographical material on prominent women, including Margaret Sanger and Pauli Murray, and covers controversial political and social issues, such as the struggle for suffrage, the advancement of women during World War II, and the prominence of lesbianism within the women's movement. "Rosenberg skillfully advances the narrative," noted a Publishers Weekly reviewer, and "surveys ably, if not too deeply, the lives of women" who faced the challenges of history as they emerged.

In Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think about Sex and Politics, Rosenberg "traces the intellectual roots of feminism in various academic disciplines at Columbia" and its affiliated colleges, such as Barnard, noted Linda V. Carlisle in the Library Journal. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Rosenberg's book a "carefully constructed and thoroughly researched examination" of the vital and transformative role that Columbia's women took in changing the college from an all-male school into a "diverse research institution and influential center for feminist scholarship." Rosenberg notes that Columbia's location in cosmopolitan New York City, which itself offered more opportunity for women, and the school's segregation of women into separate schools with separate faculties provided the unique atmosphere that was required for women to challenge the university's longstanding policies. Because the women of Columbia were educated in separate schools, such as the all-female Barnard College, they were relatively unscathed by the masculine bias that accompanied most academic study, Rosenberg noted. This arrangement nurtured a dedicated, well-educated group of women who were even more determined to fully integrate Columbia. Rosenberg chronicles these efforts and provides biographical material on major figures in the slow, difficult struggle for full equality at Columbia. Among her biographical subjects are U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, feminist writer Kate Millet, and noted anthropologist Margaret Mead. The Kirkus Reviews writer called the book "essential reading for women's-studies courses."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 2004, review of Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think about Sex and Politics, p. 951.

Library Journal, November 15, 2004, Linda V. Carlisle, review of Changing the Subject, p. 72.

Publishers Weekly, May 18, 1992, review of Divided Lives: American Women in the Twentieth Century, p. 62.

Science, February 25, 1983, Hamilton Cravens, review of Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism, p. 957.