Susan Freeman

Dr. Susan Freeman, chair of gender and women's studies at Western Michigan University, engages in historical research about how queer, feminist, anti-violence and other social justice movements have achieved social and cultural change. Her co-edited book with Leila Rupp, Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History (2nd ed., University of Wisconsin Press, 2017) won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Anthology, and she is a contributor to the Queer America podcast series on teaching queer history. She is also the author of Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education in the 1940s and 1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2008). Current projects relate to ending anti-LGBTQ discrimination in Michigan; narratives of sexual violence; institutionalization and precarity in the field of women’s, gender and sexuality studies; and the beginnings of lesbian and gay studies classes on college campuses starting in 1969.