Alice Kessler-Harris

Alice Kessler-Harris is R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History at Columbia University where she is also Professor in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Professor Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of American labor and 20th-century social policy. Her books include In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2001), which won the Bancroft, Taft, Joan Kelly, and Herbert Hoover prizes; Gendering Labor History (2007), which contains her essays on women, work and social policy, the recently re-issued A Woman’s Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences (1990), and A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (2012). She is perhaps best known for the classic Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (1982, 2001). This course is based in part on the newly updated version of Kessler-Harris’ 1981 book, Women Have Always Worked: A Historical Overview.

Professor Kessler-Harris is an elected member of the Society of American Historians, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.