Vanessa May

Vanessa May is an Associate Professor of History at Hunter College, where she teaches courses on the history of women, gender, and sexuality. She received a BA with honors in History from Vassar College in 1999. She earned an MA and then a PhD in History from the University of Virginia in 2007. Before coming to Hunter College, she was an Associate Professor of History at Seton Hall University, where she directed the Women and Gender Studies Program.

May is the author of Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York 1870-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). She has written articles published in the Journal of Women’s History, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, and History Compass. She is also the author of “It is Our Job to Make Him a Worker”: Child Labor and Youth Employment in Postwar America” in the Journal of American History (December 2023). She is the book review editor for Labor: Studies in Working-Class History. May’s current book project, “The Last of the Dedicated Old Maids:” Maternalist Reform in the Nuclear Age, examines the 1950s- and 1960s-era decline of older Progressive maternalists’ political and institutional power in tandem with a larger shift in social welfare policy away from protective policies aimed at women and children.

Contact
Email: vm2324@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: TBA