Rate My Professor Lois Banner

A pioneer in women’s history, Banner co-founded the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women with Mary S. Hartman in the 1970s, editing the classic collection Clio’s Consciousness Raised: New Perspectives on the History of Women (1974). She was the first woman president of the American Studies Association, past president of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, and past president of the Coordinating Committee on Women’s History of the American Historical Association. Her awards include the Bode-Pearson Lifetime Achievement Award (2006-2007), Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentoring (2005-2006), USC Raubenheimer Outstanding Senior Faculty Award (1996), USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award (1990), and USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship (1989). Banner’s research focuses on women, gender, cultural history, nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, masculinity studies, feminist studies, sexuality and queer studies, history of physical appearance, biographies, religion, dress, glamour, and popular theater. Key publications include Women in Modern America: A Brief History (1974), Elizabeth Cady Stanton: A Radical for Women’s Rights (1979), American Beauty (1983, Knopf), In Full Flower: Aging Women, Power and Sexuality (1992, Knopf), Finding Fran: History and Memory in the Lives of Two Women (1998, Columbia University Press), Intertwined Lives: Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle (2003, Knopf), MM—Personal (2010, Abrams), Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox (2012, Bloomsbury), and Ideal Beauty: The Life and Times of Greta Garbo (2023, Rutgers University Press). Her scholarship, based on archival research, oral history, and ethnography, has significantly influenced studies of gender, sexuality, and American culture.