- women's movements
- sexualities
- comparative and transnational women's history
I began college in 1968, a revolutionary year, and I attended an elite women's college, Bryn Mawr, just outside Philadelphia. It was an incredible privilege to be in a place where women were taken seriously. In the summer of 1969, I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I saw a poster advertising what was then called "Female Liberation." I also read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex that summer, and I was hooked.
There was no such thing as women's studies, but my professors were very supportive of my passion for studying women in all of my classes. Kate Millett came to Bryn Mawr to teach a class just after the publication of Flying, and I sat in on her class. I also had an amazing class in what was then called Afro-American History with Herbert Aptheker, the first class he was ever hired to teach. Most of the activism on campus was around the anti-war movement, but the general atmosphere of feminism was very strong.
I majored in history and wrote an honors thesis on women in the labor force in Nazi Germany, and I decided to go to graduate school to study German women’s history. That wasn’t so easy in 1972. I had a false start at the University of North Carolina, where I found no support for my interests, so after a year there, I went back to Bryn Mawr, which had a very small graduate program, in order to work with my undergraduate advisor, who wasn’t a women’s historian but was incredibly smart and supportive. I ended up writing a comparative dissertation on the mobilization of women into the labor force in Germany and the United States during the Second World War, having discovered the joys of U.S. women’s history.
When I went on the job market, I found that my comparative training in U.S. and European history hurt rather than helped me because positions in history are so structured around the nation state. After teaching for a year in a temporary position at the University of Pennsylvania, I was fortunate to be hired in a women's studies/women's history position at Ohio State University, where I stayed for 25 years.
I was the first faculty member in women’s studies at Ohio State—and the Office of Women's Studies wasn’t even an academic unit. Student protests had resulted in the setting up of the office, and there had been some courses taught by graduate students and a few courses taught by faculty members within their own departments. I helped to build a curriculum, hire other faculty, develop a minor and major, and do all the things that make a place for a new discipline within the university. I learned a lot quickly!
In 2002, I had the good fortune to be hired by the Women's Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara. I served as chair from 2004 to 2008, and am now associate dean of the Division of Social Sciences.
I think that women's studies, bridging the social sciences and humanities as it does, has the potential to prepare students for a wide variety of careers. Some of the students I have taught have gone into the public sector, working for a variety of social service agencies or NGOs. One student became a freelance writer. Others have gone to medical school, law school, or graduate school. There are so many fields that need people with analytical abilities and good writing skills. Women's studies combines basic skills with specific knowledge in a way that opens up many possibilities.
I think the commitment of our women’s studies program to social justice is what is especially inspiring.
 EDUCATION
1973-1976 Ph.D. Bryn Mawr College,
(modern European and modern American history)
1972-1973 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
1968-1972 A.B. Bryn Mawr College
(magna cum laude with honors in history)
EDITOR
Journal of Women's History, 1996-2004
http://iupjournals.org/jwh/
BOOKS
Verta Taylor, Nancy Whittier, and Leila J. Rupp (editors), Feminist Frontier, 7th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007).
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
Leila J. Rupp, A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, paperback 2002).
Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987; Columbus: Ohio State University Press [paperback edition], 1990).
Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War: German and American Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
Barbara Miller Lane and Leila J. Rupp (editors and translators), Nazi Ideology Before 1933: A Documentation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978).
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Leila J. Rupp, "Teaching About Transnational Feminisms," Radical History Review 101 (Spring 2008), 191-97.
Leila J. Rupp, "At The Turn of the Millennium," Journal of Women's History 20/1 (2008), 33-38.
Leila J. Rupp, "Is the Feminist Revolution Still Missing? Reflection from Women's History," Social Problems 53 (2006), 466-72.
Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp, "Learning From Drag Queens," Contexts 5 (Summer 2006), 12-17.
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, "Becoming the 'Professors of Lesbian Love,'" Journal of Lesbian Studies 9, no. 4 (2005): 25-39.
Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp. "When the Girls are Men: Negotiating Gender and Sexual Dynamics in a Study of Drag Queens," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 30 (2005): 2115-2139.
Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp, "Chicks with Dicks, Men in Dresses: What it Means to be a Drag Queen," Journal of Homosexuality, 46 (2004): 113-133.
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, "Pauli Murray: The Unasked Question," in "Pauli Murray’s Notable Connections," Journal of Women’s History 14 (2002): 83-87.
Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp, "Loving Internationalism: The Emotion Culture of Transnational Women’s Organizations, 1888-1945," Mobilization: An International Journal 7 (2002): 125-44.
Leila J. Rupp, "Toward a Global History of Same-Sex Sexuality," Journal of the History of Sexuality 10 (April 2001): 287-302.
Leila J. Rupp, "Is Feminism the Province of Old (or Middle-Aged) Women?," Journal of Women’s History 12 (Winter 2001): 164-173.
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, "Forging Feminist Identity in an International Movement: A Collective Identity Approach to Feminism," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 24 (Winter 1999): 363-86.
Leila J. Rupp, "Feminisms and Internationalism: A View From the Centre," Gender & History 10 (November 1998): 535-38.
Leila J. Rupp, "Sexuality and Politics in the Early Twentieth Century: The Case of the International Women's Movement," Feminist Studies 23 (Fall 1997): 577-605.
Leila J. Rupp, "Challenging Imperialism in International Women's Organizations," NWSA Journal 8 (Spring 1996): 8-27.
Leila J. Rupp, "Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women's Organizations, 1888-1945," American Historical Review 99 (December 1994): 1571-1600.
Leila J. Rupp, "Zur Organisationsgeschichte der internationalen Frauenbewegung vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg," translated by Beate L. Menzel, Feministische Studien 12 (November 1994): 53-65.
Verta Taylor and Leila J. Rupp, "Women's Culture and Lesbian Feminist Activism: A Reconsideration of Cultural Feminism," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19 (Autumn 1993): 32-61.
Leila J. Rupp, "Eleanor Flexner's Century of Struggle: Women's History and the Women's Movement," NWSA Journal 4 (Summer 1992): 157-169.
Leila J. Rupp, "Feminism and the Sexual Revolution in the Early Twentieth Century: The Case of Doris Stevens," Feminist Studies 15 (Summer 1989): 289-309.
Leila J. Rupp, "The Women's Community in the National Woman's Party, 1945 to the 1960s," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10 (Summer 1985): 715-740.
Leila J. Rupp, "`Imagine My Surprise:’ Women's Relationships in Historical Perspective," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 5 (Fall 1980): 61-70.
Leila J. Rupp, "Women, Class, and Mobilization in Nazi Germany," Science and Society 43 (Spring 1979): 51-69.
 Leila J. Rupp, "Women, Power, and History," Women: A Journal of Liberation 6 (1978), 4-9.
Leila J. Rupp, "Mother of the Volk: The Image of Women in Nazi Ideology," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2 (Winter 1977), 362-379.
Women's Studies 150
"Sex, Love, and Romance" - Spring Quarter 2008
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