Women Making History: Ten Objects, Many Stories

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, 300th Anniversary University Professor Emerita at Harvard University, has transformed our understanding of early American women's lives and material culture through groundbreaking scholarship spanning five decades. After earning degrees from the University of Utah (BA, 1960), Simmons College (MA, 1971), and University of New Hampshire (PhD, 1980), she rose from teaching at a small New Hampshire college to become one of America's most influential historians. Her 1990 book "A Midwife's Tale" earned both the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize, while her casual observation that "well-behaved women seldom make history" evolved from a scholarly article into a cultural phenomenon. As James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard (1995-2018), she pioneered innovative approaches to studying ordinary lives through material objects, exemplified in works like "The Age of Homespun" and "Good Wives." Her achievements include a MacArthur Fellowship (1992), membership in the American Philosophical Society (2003), and presidency of both the American Historical Association (2009) and Mormon History Association (2014). Through her scholarship examining diaries, household inventories, textiles, and other material artifacts, she has illuminated the previously hidden lives of early American women while mentoring generations of historians in new methodological approaches.

Jane Kamensky, newly appointed President of Monticello/The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (effective January 2024), has transformed understanding of early American history through innovative approaches to cultural and social history. After earning her BA (1985) and PhD (1993) in History from Yale University, she built an extraordinary career spanning prestigious institutions including Brandeis, Brown, and Harvard, where she served as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library. Her award-winning book "A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley" (2016) earned multiple prizes including the New-York Historical Society's Zalaznick Book Prize, while her broader scholarship spans from colonial speech politics to America's first banking collapse. As co-founder of the digital journal Common-place and principal investigator for Educating for American Democracy, she has pioneered new approaches to public history. Her achievements include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Mellon Foundations, service as a Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery Commissioner, and election to multiple scholarly societies. Through her new leadership role at Monticello, she continues to advance understanding of American history while preparing for the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.