History Department

Lynn Gordon

Lynn Gordon

Associate Professor

457 Rush Rhees Library
Rochester, New York 14627-0070
lgordon@mail.rochester.edu
phone: 585.275.7721
fax: 585.756.4425

Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1980

Courses Offered
(subject to change)

Spring 2009
On Leave

Fall 2009
HIS 286W: American Foreign Relations
HIS 364W/464: Modern Jewish History

Spring 2010
HIS 148: Recent America, 1929-Present

Fields of Interest
Women's history; American social history; history of education; Progressive Era; twentieth century history; history of journalism, immigration and ethnicity.

My teaching and research focus on two areas in twentieth century American history: a) women, education and the professions; b) American foreign relations, particularly the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy. My first book dealt with women's collegiate culture at the turn of the twentieth century, and I am currently completing a biography of foreign affairs journalist Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961).

Representative Publications:

  • "Education and the Professions," Blackwell's Encyclopedia of American Women's History (2002).
  • "Why Dorothy Thompson Lost Her Job: Political Columnists and the Press Wars of the 1930s and 1940s," Presidential Address, History of Education Society, 1993 (History of Education Quarterly, Autumn 1994).
  • Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (Yale, 1990).
  • "Race, Class, and the Bonds of Womanhood at Spelman Seminary, 1881-1923," History of Higher Education Annual (1987).
  • "The Gibson Girl Goes to College," American Quarterly (1986).