Melissa Blair

Education

PhD, University of Virginia

MA, University of Virginia

BA, University of Kentucky

About Me

Melissa Estes Blair’s research focuses on women and politics in the United State in the twentieth century. Her first book, Revolutionizing Expectations: Women’s Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics 1965-1980 (University of Georgia Press, 2014) examines the role of mainstream women’s organizations such as the YWCA and League of Women Voters in the feminist movement of the 1970s. Her second book, Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of the Women who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century (University of Georgia Press, 2023) explores the work and lives of five women who ran the Women’s Division of the Democratic and Republican National Committees from 1932 until 1960. The book uncovers a group of forgotten women who were at the center of some of our most important presidential elections. They were major advisors to Presidents FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower. They used their offices to create nationwide networks of women who were the “saleswomen for the party” and helped swing elections throughout the midcentury. A portion of that research appeared in Suffrage at 100: Women’s Uneven Road in American Politics since 1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).She is also the co-author, with Maeve Kane and Vanessa Holden, of a new women’s history textbook, American Women: A New Narrative History. Her research has been supported by the Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy Presidential Libraries, Auburn’s Office of Research & Economic Development, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation, the Charles Redd Center for Western History at BYU, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.

Blair supervises graduate students working on U.S women’s history in any time period and serves on graduate committees for a variety of twentieth-century U.S. and Southern history topics. Recent graduate students working with Blair have had their research supported by the Five Colleges Consortium, the Schlesinger Library of Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, and the Adams Center for Military History & Strategic Analysis at the Virginia Military Institute. They have found jobs at the Williams School, the U.S Naval History & Heritage Command, and Montevallo University. At the undergraduate level Blair teaches classes in U.S. women’s history and the history of sexuality and the U.S. in the twentieth century, as well as world history and the senior thesis course for history majors. Prior to joining the Auburn faculty in 2015, she taught for six years at Warren Wilson College, a small liberal arts college in North Carolina.

Research Interests

U.S. women and gender; 20th-century U.S. politics; history of feminism

Publications

Books

• Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century (University of Georgia Press, 2023).
• American Women’s History: A New Narrative History, co-author with Vanessa Holden and Maeve Kane, (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023).
• Revolutionizing Expectations: Women's Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics, 1965-1980 (University of Georgia Press, 2014).

Articles and Book Chapters

• "'I have talked to you not as women but as American citizens': Female Voters and the Gender Ideology of Presidential Campaigns, 1940-1956" in Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow, eds. Suffrage at 100: Women's Uneven Road in American Politics since 1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).
• "'A Dynamic Force in our Community': Women's Clubs and Second-Wave Feminism at the Grassroots," Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies (Winter 2009).

Courses Taught

• HIST 1020: World History II
• HIST 2020: U.S. History since 1877
• HIST 3020: Women in American History
• HIST 3600: History of Sexuality in the U.S.
• HIST 4950: Senior Thesis
• HIST 7710: Graduate Research Seminar
• HIST 7200: U.S. Women's & Gender History Graduate Seminar