Gerda Lerner, Pioneering Professor of Women’s History, Dies
Gerda Lerner, a former professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who played a pioneering role in the study of women’s history, has died at age 92, a university official said on Thursday.
Lerner, who lived in Madison, Wisconsin, died on Wednesday evening, said Susan Zaeske, associate dean for advancement, arts and humanities at the College of Letters and Science at the university. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Lerner wrote several books in the field of women’s history, including her 1986 work “The Creation of Patriarchy” and her 1994 volume “The Creation of Feminist Consciousness.”
After obtaining her doctorate at New York’s Columbia University in 1966, Lerner went on to found the women’s studies program at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, which in 1972 became the first to offer a graduate degree in women’s history.
Born Gerda Kronstein to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, in 1920, she fled her homeland to escape the Nazis in the late 1930s.
Lerner told the Wisconsin Academy Review in a 2002 article that her life experience and the hardships she faced had prepared her to explore uncharted fields in history.
“When I was faced with noticing that half the population has no history, and I was told that that’s normal, I was able to resist the pressure,” Lerner told the publication.
After arriving in the United States from Europe, she married filmmaker Carl Lerner and collaborated with him in writing the 1964 civil rights-era film “Black Like Me,” based on the 1961 best-selling book by John Howard Griffin.
Carl Lerner died in 1973, and Gerda Lerner moved in 1980 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she established a doctorate program in women’s history.
Lerner was a founding member of the National Organization for Women and had a role in creating Women’s History Month, according to a biography posted online by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She retired from the university in 1991. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter Cooney)
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
