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 women’s movement of the 1970s. Her second book, Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of the Women who Shaped the Presidency, 1932-1960, will be released by University of Georgia Press in 2023. It explores the work and lives of five women who directed the Women’s Division of the Democratic and Republican National Committees from 1932 until 1960, and argues that these women were critical to national politics in this era. They actively worked to politicize the home and make women the grassroots troops of both parties. With the support of some of the most powerful politicians of the era, they made women 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, which will be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2023. 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 teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in U.S. women’s history, as well as undergraduate courses on twentieth-century grassroots politics and the senior thesis course for history majors. She 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. Graduate students working with Blair have, in the past two years, had their work 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. 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