Research
Interests:
History
of women; sexuality; obscenity; censorship; grassroots
of public policy
Selection
of Recent & Reoccurring Courses:
Reform
in American History; American History through Hollywood;
Women in the U.S.; Problems in the Twentieth-Century U.S.;
History of Media Censorship in the U.S.; Modern America;
Early America; Women in Early America; Women in Modern
America; Social Movements
Biography:
Leigh
Ann Wheeler (Ph.D. University of Minnesota, 1998) is an
Associate Professor of History and American Culture Studies,
author of Against Obscenity: Reform and the Politics
of Womanhood in America, 1873-1935 (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2004), and recipient of a National Endowment
for the Humanities fellowship (2006-2007) to work on her
next book project, tentatively titled: "Liberating
Sex: How the American Civil Liberties Union Shaped Policy
and Culture." Against Obscenity examines
the impact of suffrage on women's efforts to use moral
suasion, sex education, and local and federal laws to
reform "obscene" burlesque shows and motion
pictures. Her articles on these topics have appeared in
several journals, including the Journal of Women's
History and Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies.
Her next book, "Liberating Sex," will be the
first study to show how, why, and to what effect ACLU
activists gradually adopted sexual expression and practice
as civil liberties, persuaded juridical bodies to do the
same, joined with state affiliates and commercial media
to promote these understandings of sexuality to a broader
public, and, in the process, helped shape a distinctive
and polarized American sexual culture.
Dr.
Wheeler's research and teaching interests involve the
grassroots dimensions of public and private policy as
well as the history of women, sexuality, censorship, obscenity,
and reform in the United States. She teaches the following
courses: UNDERGRADUATE--Early America, Modern America,
Social Movements in the U.S., Women in the Modern U.S.,
Senior Research Seminar; GRADUATE--Problems in 20th-Century
U.S. History, History of Media Censorship in the U.S.,
U.S. Women's History. She advises M.A. theses and Ph.D.
dissertations that investigate a wide array of subjects,
including: the 1968 defection of Svetlana Alliluyeva (Joseph
Stalin's daughter), Citizenship and Jury Service from
the 14th to the 19th Amendment, the AmeriCorps program,
comic books during the Cold War, the development of government
policy regarding in vitro fertilization, radio reform
in the 1920s and 1930s, the feminist pornography wars
in the 1980s, and current mass-market versus "alternative"
pornography.
Selected
Publications:
Against
Obscenity: Reform and the Politics of Womanhood in America,
1873-1935 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
“Rescuing
Sex from Prudery and Prurience: American Women’s
Use of Sex Education as an Antidote to Obscenity, 1925-1932,” Journal of Women's History, 12 (Fall 2000), 173-195.
“Battling
Over Burlesque: Conflicts Between Maternalism, Paternalism,
and Organized Labor, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1920-1932,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 20 (Special
Issue: Motherhood and Maternalism, Fall 1999), 148-174.
“From
Reading Shakespeare to Reforming Burlesque: The Minneapolis
Woman’s Club and the Women’s Welfare League,
1907-1920,” Michigan Historical Review,
25 (Spring 1999), 44-75.
Awards
and Honors:
National
Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2006-2007
BGSU
Institute for the Study of Culture and Society Fellowship,
Fall 2006 |
