Rebecca B. Edwards
Professor of History on the Eloise Ellery Chair and Chair of History
Rebecca Edwards grew up in Smithfield, Virginia, and received her Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Virginia. Her research interests focus on the post-Civil War era and include electoral politics, Populism, and the history of women and gender roles. At Vassar she teaches the introductory courses "American Moments" and "Telling Stories on the American Frontier"; "House Divided: The United States 1830-1890"; "Women in the United States to 1890"; and the seminar "Peoples and Environments in the American West." She is the author of Angels in the Machinery: Gender in American Party Politics from the Civil War to the Progressive Era (Oxford, 1997) and New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865-1905 (Oxford, 2006).
Professor Edwards recently joined the US history textbook team for America's History, by James Henretta et al (Bedford). She is also working on a biography of orator Mary Lease, a daughter of Irish immigrants who became one of the foremost leaders of the Populist Party.