Laura L. Lovett is an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

, and Professor of History at the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

, where she is also the Director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program. From 2008 until 2013 she served as the co-editor-in-chief for the ''

Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth The ''Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth'' is an international peer-reviewed academic journal dealing with the development of childhood and youth cultures and the experience of young people in different times and places. The journal is ...

''.

Education and career

Lovett graduated from the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 1986 with degrees in English literature and history. She then earned an M.A. from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

in 1990. She earned her PhD at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1998 where she studied agrarianism and reform among women in late 19th century and early 20th century for her dissertation. She was a faculty member at the

University of Tennessee, Chattanooga The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UT-Chattanooga, UTC, or Chattanooga) is a public university in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. It was founded in 1886 and is one of four universities and two other affiliated institutions in the ...

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

, and the

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system and the only public research system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and a medica ...

before moving to the

in 2018. Lovett has been a fellowship committee member of the American Historical Association who spoke out against government censorship of historical debate.

Work

Lovett's scholarship addresses different dimensions of women's political action in the twentieth century. Lovett's early work concerned the histories of eugenics, pronatalism, and ideals of American home and family. She has produced historical studies of the transformative power of Black women's activism in the 1960s and 1970s at the local, national, and transnational level. Her 2021 book, ''With Her Fist Raised: Dorothy Pitman Hughes and the Transformative Power of Community Activism'', is a biography of

Dorothy Pitman Hughes Dorothy Pitman Hughes (born Dorothy Jean Ridley; October 2, 1938 – December 1, 2022) was an American feminist, child-welfare advocate, activist, public speaker, author, and small business owner. Pitman Hughes co-founded the Women’s Action A ...

, an influential activist and organizer in New York City beginning in the 1960s. Although she is best known now for speaking with

Gloria Steinem Gloria Marie Steinem (; born March 25, 1934) is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in ...

, Hughes created a community child care center that became a model for community based organizing in the 1970s, among many other causes that she has championed. Lovett is also the founding co-editor of the ''Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth'', which she started with

Martha Saxton Martha Saxton is an American professor of history and women's and gender studies at Amherst College who has authored several prominent historical biographies. Life She graduated from Columbia University, and University of Chicago. She taught at ...

in 2008; she remained as editor until 2013. In 2012, she co-edited with Lori Rotskoff a collection of essays appraising the impact of the children's book, record, and TV show, '' Free to Be… You and Me''. This set of essays features essays from the book's creators, the children who grew up with it; historians and sociologists of childhood; and social activists, cultural critics, and producers of children's media today.

Selected publications

* * *Reviews for ''When We Were Free to Be'' * * * * “Eugenic Housing: Redlining, Reproductive Regulation, and Suburban Development in the United States,” Women's Studies Quarterly 48 (2020), 76-83. * “The Popeye Principle: Selling Child Health in the First Nutrition Crisis,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 30 (2005) 803-838. * "'African and Cherokee By Choice': Race and Resistance Under Legalized Segregation," American Indian Quarterly 22 (1998), 203-229.

References

External links

* Laura L. Lovett website at the University of Pittsburgh {{DEFAULTSORT:Lovett, Laura L. University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of California, San Diego alumni University of Pittsburgh faculty Living people 21st-century American historians American women historians 21st-century American women writers Year of birth missing (living people)