Lora Wildenthal is the John Antony Weir Professor of History at Rice University, holding a prominent position within the History Department. She concurrently directs the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality and serves as Affiliated Faculty in the Program in Politics, Law, and Social Thought. Wildenthal obtained her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1994, her B.A. from Rice University, and participated in a one-year German Academic Exchange Program fellowship at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, administered by Rice University. Prior to her arrival at Rice in 2003, she taught at Pitzer College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Texas A&M University. Throughout her career, she has emphasized interdisciplinary scholarship bridging history, gender studies, human rights, and colonial legacies.

Wildenthal's research interests include modern Germany, European women and gender history, human rights, modern colonialism, and the history of money and labor rights as human rights. Her current project investigates the history of the meanings of wages, particularly focusing on men, women, girls, and boys as free waged workers during the era of the Prussian reforms in the early 1800s, encompassing the Napoleonic period and its aftermath, alongside the broader history of wage studies. Key publications encompass German Women for Empire, 1884-1945 (Duke University Press, 2001), The Language of Human Rights in West Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), and the co-edited Routledge History of Human Rights with Jean Quataert (Routledge, 2020). Other significant works include contributions to Imagining Human Rights (2015) and articles such as "Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the German Colonial Empire" (1997) and "Germany's Colonial Pasts" (2005). She teaches undergraduate courses like HIST 101 "Modern Europe, 1500-1789," SWGS 101 "Introduction to the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality," HIST 108 "World History since 1492," HIST 455 "History of Human Rights," HIST 459 "Nazism and the Holocaust," and FWIS 169 "What Are Human Rights?"; graduate seminars on human rights, nationalism, and women's and gender history; and in Spring 2024, a Big Questions course "What is Capitalism?" Wildenthal mentors undergraduates on independent research projects through programs like HIST, SWGS, Mellon Mays, and Rice Undergraduate Scholars, and serves on dissertation committees for doctoral students in History, English, Anthropology, Religion, and Music at Rice.

Professional Email: wildenth@rice.edu