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2004-2005 Fellows

2004-2005 Fellow Freedman

Estelle Freedman

Stanford University
Department of History

Estelle Freedman is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. history at Stanford, where she has taught since 1976.  She is the recipient of three campus teaching awards and the Roelker Award for graduate mentorship from the American Historical Association.   Her publications include two award-winning books on the history of women's prison reform in the U.S. -- Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930, and Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition -- as well as two synthetic accounts -- Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (with John D'Emilio) and No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women.  She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Project Summary

Building on her previous studies of sexuality, crime, and feminism, Freedman's next book, "The Politics of Rape: Gender, Race, and Social Change in America, 1970-1970," will explore how social movements redefined sexual violence in the U.S. from the 1870s to the 1970s. It will illuminate the complex historical legacies that continue to inform social policy concerning sexual violence.

Freedman is interested in the changing cultural meanings and legal status of rape in the United States, and in how the treatment of rape illuminates power relationships based on sexuality, gender, and race. In particular, she explores social movements that attempted to redefine rape. These include late nineteenth-century women's rights and free love advocates, Progressive-era opponents of lynching, and left-wing and liberal groups from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s that defended black men accused of rape. Her study will provide the political pre-history for the revival of feminist anti-rape campaigns in the 1970s.