Alice Kessler-Harris

Who is Alice Kessler-Harris?

Alice Kessler-Harris is the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History at Columbia University, in New York City and former president of the Organization of American Historians. She specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.

Kessler-Harris received her B.A. from Goucher College in 1961 and her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1968.

Her newest book, A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman, was published in June 2012. Her other books include Gendering Labor History, which collects some of her best-known essays on women and wage work; In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America, which won several prizes including the Joan Kelly Prize, the Philip Taft award, and the Bancroft Prize. Among her other fellowships and awards, Kessler-Harris has been a fellow at the National Humanities Center in Durham, North Carolina and at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the past president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association.