Linda K. Kerber is the May Brodbeck Professor of History and Lecturer in Law at the University of Iowa. In her writing and teaching she has emphasized the history of citizenship, gender, and authority. She is the author or editor of six books, including No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship ( Hill & Wang 1998) for which she was awarded the Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in U.S. legal history and the Joan Kelley Prize for the best book in women’s history (both awarded by the American Historical Association). The latest edition of Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, co-edited with Jane De Hart and Cornelia Hughes Dayton, will be published next fall by Oxford University Press.

Her essays have appeared in academic journals, law reviews, op-ed pages and The Chronicle of Higher Education,. She has served as president of the American Historical Association, of the Organization of American Historians, and of the American Studies Association ( 1988). She is at work on a new book about the history of women in the United States, tentatively entitled Why Diamonds Really Are a Girl’s Best Friend, and Other Things You Need to Know About American History, and also on a study of the history of statelessness in the U.S.

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