We are pleased to announce that our illustrious colleague in the Women’s History program, Robert Leleux, has written an illuminating piece in The American Prospect on the late Gerda Lerner and her contributions to Women’s History and academia as a whole. Leleux writes:

The restoration of half the human race to the historical record has led to consequences beyond anything Lerner could have imagined at the start of her career. When scholars started peering over the formidable shoulders of such “great women” as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and began researching and analyzing the traditional stuff of the vast majority of women’s lives—pregnancy and childbirth, child-rearing and housework—a picture of humanity with subversive implications emerged. …Little wonder that the insights of women’s history have proven contagious, inspiring the LGBT community to discover its own place in the past.

Enjoy Leleux’s excellent tribute, “Matriarch,” here.