Linda J. Nicholson papers (Ms.2010.042)

Biographical / Historical

Linda J. Nicholson began her academic career at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her B.A. in Philosophy in 1968. Interested in applying her skills toward social and political questions, she pursued her graduate work at Brandeis University, completing a Masters in the History of Ideas in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1975.

During her doctoral studies, Nicholson taught at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, the University of Lancaster in England, and SUNY-Albany. As an assistant professor at SUNY-Albany in the 1970s, she was asked to teach a course for the burgeoning Women's Studies program, the work for which inspired her first book, Gender and History: The Limits of Social Theory in the Age of Family (Columbia University Press, 1986). At Albany, Nicholson became Professor of Education Administration and Policy Studies, Women's Studies, and Political Science and finished her second book, Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern (Cornell University Press, 1999).

In 2000, Nicholson joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis as Professor of History and the Susan E. and William P. Stiritz Distinguished Professor of Women's Studies. She directed the Women and Gender Studies Program from 2001 to 2006.

Nicholson teaches courses in feminist thought and concepts of identity. In addition to her published monographs, she has edited the book series Thinking Gender for Routledge and several collections, including Feminism/Postmodernism (Routledge, 1989) and Social Postmodernism (Cambridge University Press, 1995). She has received fellowships from the Divinity School of Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.