Linda Borish

Dr. Linda J. Borish is chair of the Department of History with a joint appointment as associate professor of gender and women's studies at Western Michigan University.

Borish joined WMU in 1991 after earning her Ph.D. in American studies from The University of Maryland, College Park in 1990. She teaches courses in American sport history, gender history, material culture, and 19th and 20th century social and cultural history. She has directed undergraduate research projects and has served as supervising professor of M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations in history. Courses taught include HIST 2125 - Sport in American Culture; HIST 3191 - American Sport History, Writing intensive course; HIST 4006 - Race and Ethnicity in American Sport History, Baccalaureate writing course; HIST 4016 - Artifacts in American History, Baccalaureate writing course; and graduate courses including HIST 6050 - Gender in American Culture and HIST 6440 - Material Culture.

Borish’s publications in sport history, women’s and gender history and American Jewish history include Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization (Human Kinetics, 2008), with Gerald Gems and Gertrud Pfister, and Lead Editor, The Routledge History of American Sport (Routledge, Fall 2016). She has published numerous book chapters including chapters in Sports in Chicago; Sports and the American Jew; Jews in the Gym: Judaism, Sports, and Athletics; and A Companion to American Sport History, and scholarly articles in the Journal of Sport History, The International Journal of the History of Sport, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, and others. Borish is executive producer/historian of “Jewish Women in American Sport: Settlement Houses to the Olympics,” documentary film (2007), and is a research associate of The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University. She has earned various fellowships for her research on women and American sport history.

Borish has experience in material culture studies from her work at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She was awarded the College of Arts and Sciences Diversity and Inclusion Recognition Award for 2019-20.