Karen M. Offen Historian Author Feminism Women France

Karen Offen (Ph.D., Stanford University) is a historian and independent scholar, affiliated as a Senior Scholar with the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford University. She publishes on the history of Modern Europe, especially France and its global influence; Western thought and politics with reference to family, gender, and the relative status of women; historiography; women's history; national, regional and global histories of feminism; comparative history.

She is a founder and past secretary treasurer of the International Federation for Research in Women's History, and is past president of the Western Association of Women Historians (USA). She has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for study and research (1995-96), the Rockefeller Foundation (1985-86), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1980-81).

She has directed four interdisciplinary NEH Summer Seminars for College Teachers on the "Woman Question," organized around clusters of original historical texts in translation, and co-directed a fifth on “Motherhood and the Nation-State” at Stanford in 2002. She has recently taught master classes at the Central European University in Budapest and at the University of Konstanz, in Germany. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the International Museum of Women (San Francisco), where she chairs the Exhibition Development and Educational Programming Committee. In May 2004 she was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from her alma mater, the University of Idaho.

Karen has co edited three volumes of interpretative documentary texts, Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth Century England, France, and the United States (1981), and the two volume Women, the Family, and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, 1750 1950 (1983), both published by Stanford University Press. Her monograph, Paul de Cassagnac and the Authoritarian Tradition in Nineteenth Century France, appeared in 1991. She has also co edited the 1991 volume, Writing Women's History: International Perspectives (with Ruth Roach Pierson and Jane Rendall), on behalf of the International Federation for Research in Women's History. Karen's latest book is European Feminisms, 1700 1950: A Political History (Stanford University Press, 2000, 560 pp., $19.95 paper; $60 cloth). She is completing a book on the "woman question" debate in modern France and an edited volume, Global Feminisms, 1789-1945.

Karen's recent articles focus on the comparative history of feminism (including "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach," which has been translated into five languages); the historiography of women in the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the European Revolutions of 1848; the feminism of Mary Wollstonecraft in comparative perspective; the campaign for women's suffrage in France; and the political career of the French feminist Madame Avril de Sainte-Croix.

Education

Academic Degrees

Ph.D.   Stanford University, 1971, Modern European History
M.A.    Stanford University, 1964, Modern European History
B.A.     University of Idaho, 1961, History

Back

Honors and Awards

Fellowships and Scholarships

1995-96 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship

1985-86 Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship

1980-81 National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship for Independent Study and Research

1966-67 French Government Grant, Paris, University of Paris, France.

1964-65 University Fellowships, Stanford

1962-63 Graduate fellowships from Mortar Board (national collegiate service honorary for women), Kappa Kappa Gamma (national collegiate social fraternity), Pi Gamma Mu (national social science honorary).

1961-62 Fulbright Scholarship, University of Nancy, France.

1957-61 General Motors National Scholarship.

1957 National Merit Scholarship Finalist and Winner (declined).

Grants

2001 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, Grant (with Marilyn J. Boxer) to direct 2002 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers at Stanford.

1991 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, Grant to direct 1992 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers at Stanford.

1989 ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, co director grant (with Mary Beth Norton) for
the first conference of the International Federation for Research in Women's
History at Bellagio, June 1989.

1988 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, grant to direct 1989 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers at Stanford

1985 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, grant to direct 1986 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers at Stanford.

1983 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES, grant (with Susan Groag
Bell) to direct 1984 NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers at Stanford.

Mini Grants

1988, 1993 MARILYN YALOM RESEARCH FUND, grants to support translations of
documentary texts in the European debate on the woman question, 1750 1850.

1990 MARILYN YALOM RESEARCH FUND, grant in support of Writing Women's
History: International Perspectives.

2003 MARILYN YALOM RESEARCH FUND, grant in support of translation of two articles into French.

Prizes and Honors

1996 Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein Prize for Outstanding Work by an Independent
Scholar Published in 1994 or 1995, presented by the National Coalition of
Independent Scholars for the article, "Women, Suffrage and Citizenship with a French Twist, 1789 1993."

1994 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, University of Idaho.

1990 Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, for the article, "Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach."

1988 Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, for the article "Ernest Legouvé and the Doctrine of 'Equality in Difference'."

1985 Honorable Mention, Sierra Prize, Western Association of Women Historians,
for the book, Women, the Family, and Freedom.

1982 Co winner, Sierra Prize, for Victorian Women.

Invited Lectureships

Sept. 2002 Invited Speaker, Gosteli Foundation/Archive 20th Anniversary Celebration, Berne, Switzerland.

Nov. 2001 Keynote Speaker, European Historians’ Luncheon, Southern Historical Association, New Orleans

May 2001 Keynote Speaker, Fourth Conference on Portuguese Women’s History, Porto, Portugal

Feb. 2000 Keynote Speaker, Tenth Congress of Swiss Women Historians, Fribourg, Switzerland

Oct. 1999 Keynote Speaker, First Conference on Eastern European Women’s History, European Humanities University, Minsk, Belarus

Feb. 1998 Plenary Speaker, Conference on the Revolution of 1848, National Assembly, Paris, France

July 1997 Plenary Speaker, Eleventh Biennial Conference, Australiasian Association of European Historians, Adelaide, Australia

June 1997 Keynote Speaker, Spanish Association for Women’s History Conference (AIEHM), Cadiz, Spain

1993 Plenary Speaker, International Conference on Women’s Suffrage, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

1991 Norwegian Research Council/Scandinavian Universities Fall Lecture Tour (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland)

1991 The Grace Martin Lecturer, University of Idaho

1990 The Russell Lecturer, Alfred University

1989 Keynote Speaker, Smithsonian Conference on Women and the Progressive Era, Washington, D. C.

1988 The Dorothy Lambert Whisnant Lecturer in Women's History, Clemson University.

Back