Estelle Freedman

Estelle Freedman was born Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1947. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Barnard College and pursued graduate work at Columbia University, earning a master’s degree in 1972 and a PhD in 1976. She taught at Princeton University as a lecturer while she completed her dissertation and then took an appointment at Stanford University, where she founded the Program in Feminist Studies. Freedman is the author of two award-winning studies: Their Sisters’ Keepers: Women’s Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 and Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition. She has taught as a visiting professor at many universities, held numerous fellowships—including ones from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Association of University Women—and received research grants from the Pew Foundation and other organizations. Her most recent publication, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, which she wrote with John D’Emilio, describes the evolution of American sexuality during the last three-and-a-half centuries. Freedman has served as consulting editor to Feminist Studies, as associate editor of Signs and Journal of the History of Sexuality, and as consultant on numerous film productions, including the Academy Award-winning COMMON THREADS: STORIES FROM THE QUILT. (07/09)

She Even Chewed Tobacco
By Elizabeth Stevens and Estelle Freedman, 1983, 40 min., BW
The Gold Rush. A new frontier. Nineteenth century California offered women the opportunity to pioneer new roles for themselves. Meet Babe Bean, the...