Estelle Freedman

Estelle Freedman, a U.S. historian specializing in women's history and feminist studies, taught at Stanford from 1976-2021 and co-founded the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her contributions to teaching have been recognized by Stanford’s Dinkelspiel Award, Dean's Award, Rhodes Prize, and Kahn-Van Slyke Graduate Mentoring Award, as well as the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for graduate mentorship from the American Historical Association. Freedman has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, where she is currently a Faculty Fellow.

Professor Freedman has written two award-winning books about women's prison reform--Their Sisters' Keepers (1981) and Maternal Justice (1996)--and two overviews of feminist history--No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (2002) and The Essential Feminist Reader (2007). With John D’Emilio she co-authored Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (3d ed., 2012) and co-edited My Desire for History: Essays on Gay, Community, and Labor History by Allan Bérubé (2011). Her multiple award-winning study Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation appeared in 2013. She continues to study the history of sexual assault and harassment through the Stanford Oral History Text Analysis Project, focusing on women's narratives located in digitized oral histories. She is also co-producing/directing a documentary film about the musical and political life of folk singer Faith Petric (1915-2013).