Jennifer Nelson Ph.D.
Professor
Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, History
Education
- Ph.D., United States History, Rutgers University,
- B.A., Semiotics, Brown University,
Professional Background
Dr. Jennifer Nelson is a United States historian with an emphasis in women’s history. Her dissertation became her first book, Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement (NYU Press 2003). Her second book, More Than Medicine: A History of the Women’s Health Movement (NYU Press 2016), extended her research on the feminist and women’s health movements in the United States. She also co-edited with Barbara Molony a volume on transnational feminism, Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism: Transnational Histories.
Nelson has published articles in a variety of women’s history, medical history, and women’s studies journals on the subject of reproductive rights, women’s health, and social justice movements. Her first article on the feminist abortion rights movement in Mexico, “Abortion Rights and Human Rights in Mexico,” in Tanya Saroj Bakhru, ed. Reproductive Justice and Sexual Rights: Transnational Perspectives, was published this year (Routledge 2019). She is currently working on a book-length project on the movements for and against legal abortion in Mexico.
- Professor and Director, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, The University of Redlands, July 2014 to the present.
- Associate Professor and Director, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, The University of Redlands, July 2008-July 2014.
- Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies Program, The University of Redlands, September 2004-June 2008.
- Director, Sarah Isom Center for Women, The University of Mississippi, July 2003-July 2004.
- Assistant Director, Sarah Isom Center for Women, The University of Mississippi, August 2002-July 2003.
- Visiting Assistant Professor, Women's Studies, State University of New York at New Paltz, September 2001-August 2002.
- Lecturer, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, September 1999-July 2001.
Affiliations
- Jennifer Nelson is an active member of the National Women’s Studies Association, the Berkshires Conference of Women Historians, and the Western Association of Women’s Historians.
Publications
Books
- Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism: Transnational Histories. Edited by Barbara Molony and Jennifer Nelson. London: Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming spring 2016.
- More than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women's Health Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
- Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
Journal Articles
- "Historicizing Body Knowledge: Women's Liberation, Self-Help, and Menstrual Representation in the 1970s." Frontier: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 40, Number 1, 2019, pp. 39-62 "
- ‘Breaking the Chain of Poverty’: Family Planning and the Population Council/Office of Economic Opportunity Alliance." Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 69 (1) 2014.
- “‘All this that has happened to me shouldn’t happen to nobody else’: Loretta Ross and the Women of Color Reproductive Freedom Movement of the 1980s,” The Journal of Women’s History, 22:3 (2010).
- “Health Care Reconsidered: Forging Community Wellness among African Americans in the South,” The Bulletin of the History of Medicine 81:3 (2007).
- ”Using Blogs and Wikis in the Women’s Studies Classroom,” Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women’s Studies Resources 27:2 (2006).
- “‘Hold your head up and stick out your chin’: Community Health and Women’s Health in Mound Bayou, Mississippi,” National Women’s Studies Association Journal 17:1 (2005).
- “‘Abortions under community control’: Feminism, Nationalism, and the Politics of Reproduction Among New York City's Young Lords,” The Journal of Women's History 13:1 (2001).
Areas of Expertise
- Reproductive health
- Women's health
- Reproductive politics
- History of feminism in U.S.