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, and the politics of knowledge.
In 2010, Karen was elected to the Bureau (Executive Board) of the International Committee for the Historical Sciences/ Comité International des Sciences Historiques (ICHS/CISH), based in Paris. 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 taught master classes at the Central European University in Budapest and at the University of Konstanz, in Germany. For eleven years she served on the Board of Directors for the International Museum of Women (San Francisco), where she chaired the Exhibition and Programs Committee. In May 2004 she received an honorary doctorate in humane letters from her alma mater, the University of Idaho, and in 2005 was honored by the Western Association of Women Historians. She has been listed in Contemporary Authors, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in the West, and Who’s Who in American Education.
Widely published in scholarly reviews in many languages, Karen has also 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 and is now available as an e-book. She 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 monograph is European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History (Stanford UP, 2000) In addition to many articles and review-essays, she has since published an edited volume, Globalizing Feminisms 1789-1945 (London: Routledge, series Rewriting History, ed. Jack Censer, 2010), and was featured as the Routledge History Author of the Month in March 2010. She is completing a book on the "woman question" debates in France.
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
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
2004 Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters, The University of Idaho.
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, The 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.
Last revised: February 19, 2010
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