Dr. Erika Kuhlman joined the faculty at Idaho State University in August 2003. She teaches courses in Women's History, U.S. Industrialization and Reform, U.S. and the World, and survey courses in U.S. History. She has researched and written on post-World War I reconciliation between the U.S. and Germany, emphasizing women's efforts at peace-making. A recent article written by Kuhlman, "We Women Can Build a Bridge: Gender, Women Trans-nationals, and Reconciliation in the Aftermath of the Great War," appeared as a chapter in The Women's Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives 1914-1919 (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan) in 2007.
Joining Women Studies
Erika agreed to accept the position of Co-director of Women Studies in 2007 when sitting Co-director, Laura Woodworth-Ney was tapped as Chair of the History department. She was promoted to Director in the Spring of 2008. Because her teaching and research is largely concerned with women's roles in history, she is the perfect person for the Women's Studies Program. Erika's courses provide a broad overview of women’s experiences in history, from pre-history to the present, with focus on the modern world. She explores women’s changing roles in societies and the basic literature on women’s historiography. She deals with questions such as: has women’s status generally improved or deteriorated over time? What strategies has the women’s rights movement deployed to improve women’s status in societies? What role has religion played in women’s lives? Have women had a common experience, despite differences of place, time, class, and race?
Academic Background
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Ph.D. American Studies, May 1995, Washington State University
Dissertation: The Feminist Pacifist Challenge to Progressive Hegemony: The Debate Over U.S. Intervention in World War I -
M.A. History, June 1987, University of Montana
Thesis: From Farmland to Coalville: Red Lodge, Montana's Finnish Immigrants, 1890-1920 - B.A. Liberal Arts (minor in Political Science), June 1983, University of Montana, cum laude
Publications
Monographs & Anthologies
- Of Little Comfort: War Widows, Fallen Soldiers, and the Remaking of the Nation after the Great War. New York:New York University Press. Under contract.
- Co-editor, Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective. Leiden, Netherlands: Republic of Letters (with Kimberly Jensen). Under contract.
- Reconstructing Patriarchy After the Great War: Women, Gender, and Postwar Reconciliation between Nations, Palgrave Macmillan Series in Transnational History, series eds. Akira Iriye and Rana Mitter. Palgrave Macmillan,2008.
- Petticoats and White Feathers: Gender Conformity, Race, the Progressive Peace Movement, and the Debate Over War, 1895-1919. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997.
- A to Z of Women in World History. New York: Facts on File, Inc., August 2002; second printing, August 2007.
Book Chapters, Articles, & Entries
- "American Doughboys and German Fräuleins: Sexuality, Patriarchy, and Privilege in the American-Occupied Rhineland, 1918-1923," Journal of Military History 71, no. 4 (October 2007): 1077-1106.
- "The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and Reconciliation after the Great War," in The Women's Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914-19 (227-243) eds. Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
- "Individualism" in American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Bret Carroll (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003):314-316.
- "Women's Ways in War: The Feminist Pacifism of the New York City Woman's Peace Party," Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies vol. 18, no.1 (Spring, 1997): 80-92.
- "Four Lights," and "Peace and Freedom," (two entries) Women's Periodicals in the United States: Political and Social Issues eds. Endres and Lueck (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996): 108-114; 274-280.
- "On the Move, On Their Own: Finnish American Women's Experiences in Red Lodge, Montana," Siirtolaisuus/Migration 1 (1991): 14-20.
- "'Greetings From This Coal Village!': Red Lodge, Montana's Finnish Immigrants, 1904-1939," Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Spring 1990): 32-45.