Columbia University Offering a MOOC on Women’s History

Alice Kessler-Harris, the R. Gordon Hoxie Professor Emerita of American History in Honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower at Columbia University, has launched a massive open online course (MOOC) entitled “Women Have Always Worked.” The free course shows the central role women have played in American society since before the Revolutionary War. The course is in two parts each with 10 sessions with the first part spanning the years 1700 to 1920. “Women Have Always Worked” contains more than a dozen interviews with a veritable Who’s Who of scholars who founded and practice in the field of women’s history.

“Women’s history is a relatively new field, but one that has influenced how historians think about the past by introducing new questions, new evidence and new perspectives into the historical canon. All of us who teach about women and gender know that as we expand the definition of history, we increase the sum total of knowledge about our shared past,” said Professor Kessler-Harris.

Professor Kessler-Harris is the author of several books including A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (Bloomsbury Press, 2012). She is a graduate of Goucher College in Baltimore. Dr. Kessler-Harris earned a master’s degree and  Ph.D. at Rutgers University in New Jersey.