Joan Wallach Scott (born December 18, 1941)
Is an American historian of France with contributions in gender history and intellectual history. She is the Harold F. Linder Professor at the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Among her publications was the article "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis", published in 1986 in the American Historical Review. This article, "undoubtedly one of the most widely read and cited articles in the journal's history",[2] was germinal in the formation of a field of gender history within the Anglo-American historical profession.
Personal life
She was born Joan Wallach in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Lottie (née Tannenbaum) and Sam Wallach, high school teachers. She is the niece of the actor Eli Wallach (her father's brother). Her family was Jewish, and her father was born in Dolina, Poland. She graduated from Brandeis in 1962 and received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969. Before coming to the Institute for Advanced Study, Scott taught in history departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Brown University. At Brown University she was founding director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, and the Nancy Duke Lewis University Professor and professor of history. She serves on the editorial boards of Signs, Differences, History and Theory and, since January 2006, the Journal of Modern History. In 2010, she helped to found History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History.
Scott has also played a major role in the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as the chair of its Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
