Nancy MacLean

20th-century America; Gender, Race, and Labor

Office: 329 Harris
Phone: 847-467-4045
E-mail: nkm050northwestern.edu

Nancy MacLean (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, 1989) is Professor of History and African American Studies and Chair of the History Department. She studies the workings of class, gender, race, and region in twentieth-century social movements and public policy. Her first book, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), was named a “noteworthy” book of the year by the New York Times Book Review, and received the Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, the Owsley Prize from the Southern Historical Association, and the Rosenhaupt Award from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Her most recent book is Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Harvard University Press, 2006). The recipient of an Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, it also the Willard Hurst Prize for best book in sociolegal history from the Law and Society Association, the Labor History Best Book Prize from the International Association of Labor History Institutions, the Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations, and the Lillian Smith Book Award from the Southern Regional Council.

She is currently completing two books for course use: The Modern Women’s Movement: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford/St. Martin’s, forthcoming April 2008), and Debating the Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present, with Donald T. Critchlow (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming June 2008). Her articles have appeared in Feminist Studies, Gender & History, In These Times, Labor, Labor History, Journal of American History, The Nation, and the OAH Magazine of History. A recipient of fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Russell Sage Foundation, as well as Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research and Kaplan Humanities Center, she is one of the History department’s several Charles Deering McCormick Professors of Teaching Excellence.

Curriculum Vitae