Leandra Zarnow, Ph.D.

Currently, I am an Associate Professor in History at University of Houston.  Before this appointment, I taught in the Department of History at Stanford University, where I was a New Faculty Fellow selected by the American Council of Learned Societies. I also have held postings as a research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of the United States, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and research fellow at the Center for the United States and the Cold War, New York University.  In 2001, I received my B.A. in Government and American Studies from Smith College, and in 2010, I completed my Ph.D. in History and doctoral emphasis in Feminists Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.  

Beyond my book, Battling Bella, and edited volume, Suffrage at 100, I have published articles in the academic journals Law & Social Inquiry, Journal of Policy History, and Feminist Formations, and in the collections No Permanent Waves and Breaking the Waves.  My article, “Braving Jim Crow to Save Willie McGee: Bella Abzug, the Legal Left, and Civil Rights Innovation, 1948-1951,” was recognized by the American Bar Foundation and won the 2010 Judith Lee Ridge Prize from the Western Association of Women Historians. My research has been generously supported by groups including the National Endowment for the Humanities, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.

I am committed to making history accessible and useful to a public audience. Along these lines, in 2017, I co-organized with Dr. Nancy Beck Young a 40th Anniversary conference commemorating the federally funded 1977 National Women’s Conference that brought nearly 2000 former participants, scholars, activists, students, and the interested public.  I am now collaborating on a digital public history project, “Sharing Stories from 1977,” to capture the over 150,000 stories of National Women’s Conference participants. We hope to have this online archive, research engine, and teaching resource completed by the fiftieth anniversary in 2027.

While my love for politics began in student government, I can trace my current research back to 1999-2000, when I interned while in college at the legal aid clinic Ayuda, Immigrant Women Program of NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum), and the Office of the Vice-President at the White House. This experience exposed me first hand to the interplay between grassroots organizing, legal advocacy, and federal policy-making. Since then, I have been exploring how social movement advocates, and particularly women, have attempted to use institutional channels—legislatures, the courts, and popular media—to achieve social and political change. I also turn my gaze toward my profession, thinking about how history has been historically preserved and documented, and what this says about who is valued, recognized, and powerful in the past and today. 

Raised in Echo Park, Glendale, and Escondido, California, I now split my time between Houston, Texas and Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, living a bi-national existence. In between writing, I create art of every kind, with pastel drawing, beading, and collage as favorites. I also love to garden, hang at the beach, and walk our beagle Bosco.