Ruth Sara Feldstein is an American historian with research interests in United States history; her work focuses on 20th-century culture and politics; women's and gender history; and African American history. Currently she is professor of history and American studies at Rutgers University.Profile: Ruth Feldstein at Rutgers"Ruth Feldstein", speaker profile at the Organization of American Historians
Education Feldstein earned B.A. in arts (1986) from the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania archives (retrieved December 11, 2017) (magna cum laude"Ruth Feldstein and Asa Nixon Marry", The New York Times, August 20, 1990). M.A. in history (1989) from Brown University.Brown University, The Two Hundred and Twenty-First Commencement, Providence, Rhode Island, May 29, 1989 Ph.D. in history (1996) from Brown.
Work In her book Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930-1965 (Cornell, 2000) she traces the history of liberalism between the eras of the New Deal and Great Society, and argues that central to its development were conservative gender ideologies, which perpetuated the stereotypes of bad mothering by domineering "black matriarchs" and bad white "moms"."Publisher's review of Motherhood in Black and White"
Her article about Nina SimoneRuth Feldstein, “’I Don’t Trust You Anymore’; Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Journal of American History 87, no. 4 (2005): 1365 earned her the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Prize, Best Article on Black Women's History.
Her book How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement (2013), in which she explores the influence of women entertainers (Lena Horne, Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson) on the civil rights and feminist movements, won the Benjamin Hooks National Book Award and the International Association for Media History's Michael Nelson Prize."his Author Is Redefining Feminism in the Civil Rights Movement", by Lauren Byrnes, April 2, 2014"Harnessing Celebrity to Civil Rights Cause - ‘How It Feels to Be Free’ Salutes Black Female Entertainers", The New York Times, January 15, 2014
Personal life In 1990, Feldstein married Asa Nixon, a doctor.
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