IGE Professors Debut Second Book in Series on Women Making History

A new book co-edited by Interdisciplinary General Education lecturers Rosanne Welch and Peg Lamphier examines the life and career of Gloria Steinman, a feminist journalist and political activist who has been nationally recognized as a pioneer for women’s rights and equal opportunity. 

“Gloria Steinem: A Life in American History” traces Steinem's life from childhood to present day, focusing on her work after the Women's Rights Movement and the rise of the Conservative Movement in the early 1980s. It also includes her work as co-founder of Ms. Magazine, a national feminist publication that provides coverage of women’s issues.  

The biography, written by William Prudent, is the second of an eight-book series called “Women Making History” for ABC-CLIO publishing. The first book, which came out last year, covered the life of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Forthcoming books, which are scheduled to publish across the next two years, will tell the stories of Sally Ride, Ida B. Wells, Helen Keller, Delores Huerta, Eleanor Roosevelt, Wilma Mankiller and Hillary Clinton.  

“Gloria Steinem has inspired me from the moment she helped found Ms. Magazine, which I began to read in college and where I learned so much news from around the world that did not appear in my local paper since Ms. articles focused on the activities of women,” said Welch. “As I followed her career, I kept learning the new and innovative things she was doing to bring women’s issues into the mainstream right up to helping create Take Our Daughters to Work Day and beyond.  I was thrilled when our publisher agreed she should be one of the women profiled in our new series of biographies based on ‘Women Making History’.” 

Welch and Lamphier have written a plethora of books on gender, politics and American history. In 2018, their award winning “Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection,” was featured in the American Library Association’s Outstanding References Sources List and won the American Book Fest’s 2017 Best Book Award. 

“There's a lot of things to admire about Gloria Steinem, but what I like best about this book is its author, William “Bill” Pruden. Rosanne and I ‘met’ Bill working on the Encyclopedia of Women and he was so good at 20th century feminist topics we offered him the Steinem project. This is his first book, and he did a fabulous job with it,” said Lamphier.  

Throughout her career, Lamphier has published 11 books on gender, politics and women who have made great contributions to American history. She recently published a biography on the late Renaissance/Early Baroque period painter Artemisia Gentileschi, an accomplished artist that produced work at a time when very few opportunities were afforded to women.  

Welch has written or served as editor of 20 books, many of which cover trailblazing women in American history. Her most recent book project with Lamphier examined the American film industry’s depiction of the American Civil War.  

For more information about the “Women Making History” series, contact lecturers Rosanne Welch and Peg Lamphier by email at rmwelch@cpp.edu and plamphier@cpp.edu