Miriam J. Cohen
Professor of History on the Evelyn Clark Chair
Miriam Cohen, Evalyn Clark Professor of History, has been at Vassar since 1977. She received her B.A. at the University of Rochester in 1971 and Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 1978. Her specialities include the history of American women and the history of twentieth-century social reform. Her book, Workshop to Office: Two Generations of Italian Women in New York City (1993) was a finalist for the Thomas Znaniecki Prize of the American Sociological Association. She is completing a manuscript with Michael Hanagan on the comparative history of the welfare state in England, France and the United States, 1870-1950. They have published numerous articles dealing with various aspects of this work. Her most recent articles include, “The Politics of Gender and Schooling in the Early Welfare State,” in Looking Forward, Looking Back: A Reader in Women’s Studies and “Reevaluating Schooling and the American Welfare State,” forthcoming, History of Education Quarterly 45:4 (Winter, 2005).
Professor Cohen's other professional activities include membership on the selection committee for the Joan Kelly Memorial Book Prize of the American Historical Association and the Final Selection Committee for the Woodrow Wilson Fellowships in Women's Studies, 2005. She was also a senior advisory editor of Encyclopedia of Women in American History (M.E. Sharpe, 2002).