Ruth Feldstein

Professor Feldstein’s research, writing and teaching reflect her interest in gender and race and in media and politics as intersecting categories that shape each other. Her first book, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930-1965 (Cornell, 2000), is an intellectual and cultural history of liberalism from the New Deal to the Great Society. Her new book, How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, is about black women entertainers (Lena Horne, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, Diahann Carroll, Abbey Lincoln and Cicely Tyson) and their significance to the civil rights movement and to the development of second-wave feminism.