Jan 26, 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winning Historian to Speak at Library

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” This is a quote written by Harvard history professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1976 in a scholarly article. The phrase went viral — and can still be found today on t-shirts, mugs, and bumper stickers. In 2007 Ulrich went on to pen the book, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. The book examines the ways in which women shaped history, citing examples from the lives of Rosa Parks, Christine de Pizan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Virginia Woolf.

Born in Idaho and educated at The University of Utah, Simmons College, and University of New Hampshire, Ulrich is the author of several articles and books including A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812 (1990), which examines the life of midwife Martha Ballard, who practiced in northern New England. The book became a landmark piece in women’s labor history and was later adopted for a documentary film in the PBS American Experience series.

In 2006, Ulrich was named the 300^th University Professor at Harvard University. Her honors and awards are plentiful. She received the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 as well as the Bancroft Prize in American History (and several other awards and honors) for A Midwife’s Tale. Ulrich has published more than 30 scholarly articles and 18 essays, including seven American Historical Association Presidential essays.

Ulrich is currently working on the book A House Full of Females: Mormon Diaries: 1835-1870, to be published by Alfred A. Knopt. She will speak on at the Marriott Library as part of the Aileen H. Clyde 20^th Century Women’s Legacy Archive Lecture on March 10 at 7:00 p.m. For more information, click here.

BOOKS by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

• Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. (2007). Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
• Editor, Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History. (2004). Palgrave Macmillan
• The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. (2001). Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
• All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir, a collection of essays coauthored with the Utah poet Emma Lou Thayne. (1995). Aspen Books
• A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812. (1990). Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reissued in Vintage paperback
• Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. (1982). Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Reissued by Vintage (1991)