Jessica Weiss
Associate Professor
Department of History
- E-mail:
- jessica.weiss@csueastbay.edu
- Phone:
- (510) 885-3239
- Office:
- MI-4035
- Vitae:
- View my CV

Education
- BA History; UC Berkeley
- MA History; UC Berkeley
- PhD History; UC Berkeley
Publications
Book:
*To Have and To Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000) Sierra Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, 2001
Articles:
"’Don’t Knock Motherhood:’ Attitudes Toward Domesticity and Feminism in Responses to Friedan’s “Fraud of Femininity” in Kathleen Donohue, Liberty and Justice for All?: Rethinking Politics in Cold War America (1945-1965)
(University of Massachusetts Press: Amherst, forthcoming, January 2012)
“ ‘In my Hand it’s the Future, Not Diapers, You See’: Domestic Ideals in the Responses to Phyllis McGinley’s Sixpence in Her Shoe, under revision for resubmission to Journal of Women’s History
"She Also Cooks: Gender, Domesticity and Public Life in Oakland, California, 1957-1959," in Sherrie Innes, ed. Kitchen Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2000)
"A Drop-In Catering Job: Middle-Class Women and Fatherhood, 1950-1980," Journal of Family History (Summer 1999)
"Making Room for Fathers: Men, Women, and Parenthood during the Baby Boom," in Laura McCall and Donald Yacovone, eds., A Shared Experience: Men Women and the History of Gender (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
Presentations
“A Housewife and a Feminist: Readers Write Ms.,” Western Association of Women Historians, Santa Clara, 2009
Participant, “Sequels to the Sixties,” Radcliff Seminar in Women’s History, Cambridge, MA, 2008
“‘One in the Eye for Betty Friedan and her Feminine Mystique’: Housewives’ Letters to Phyllis McGinley,” Berkshires Conference of Women Historians, 2008
“The Woman who Found Herself: Redbook Readers Write Back, 1972,” Western Association of Women Historians, Vancouver, BC, 2008
“Last of a Dying Breed:” Housewives and Domesticity in the Long Postwar U.S.,” Gender and the Long Postwar, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., 2008
"'An Answer to the Feminine Mystique': The housewife and domesticity in Phyllis McGinley's A Sixpence in Her Shoe,” AHA-PCB, Honolulu, HI, 2007
“’The Woman at Home’ Talks Back: Women Defend the Choice to Stay Home in the 1970s,” Western Association of Women Historians, San Diego, 2007
“’Don’t Knock Motherhood’: Response to Friedan’s “Fraud of Femininity,” Organization of American Historians, Washington, 2006
“The Opt Out Revolution: a Round Table,” Berkshires Conference of Women Historians, Claremont, 2005
“Postwar Femininity, Bay Area Style: Gender and Public Life 1957-1964,” Western Association of Women Historians, Phoenix, 2005
“A Careerist is Also A Woman”: Gender, Domesticity, and Public Life in Oakland, CA 1957-1964,” American Studies Association, Atlanta, 2004
“Red Betty: Communism, Domesticity, and Feminism and the Response to The Feminine Mystique,” Social Science History Association, Baltimore, 2003
Grant Awards
Schlesinger Library Research Support Grant 2006-2007
Dean’s Research Fellowship CSU East Bay, 2004-2005
Research Support Grant, CSU East Bay, 2001
New Faculty Support Grant, CSUH, 2000
Service
California State University, East Bay (formerly Hayward) Professor, 1999-
California State University, East Bay, Interim Co-Director, Student Center for Academic Achievement, 2007-2008
California State University, Hayward, Lecturer, 1995-1999
University of Utah, Visiting Assistant Professor, U.S. History/ Women's History, 1996-97
University of California, Berkeley, Lecturer, U.S. History/Women’s History, 1995-1996
Page Last Updated: August 23, 2011



