Alison L. Lefkovitz

Research interests: Legal history, history of gender and sexuality, political history

Alison L. Lefkovitz received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2010 and taught at Miami University before joining the federated department of history at Rutgers-Newark and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. As an associate professor of history at NJIT, she teaches U.S. history and runs the BA program in Law, Technology and Culture. Her book, Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women's Liberation, was published in 2018. In it, she explores how legal and political agents worked the category of gender out of marriage, and how a host of lawmakers, judges, activists, and ordinary Americans subsequently struggled to redefine family and marriage without gender. She argues that eliminating the legal gendered roles of husband and wife ultimately helped both to transform the political economy and to produce a conservative backlash.

Miami University Outstanding Professor Award, 2011-2012

University of Chicago Center for Gender Studies Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 2009-2010

James C. Hormel Dissertation Fellowship in Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2008-2009

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Ph.D., American History, 2010
“The Problem of Marriage in the Era of Women’s Liberation”
Committee: Amy Dru Stanley (chair), George Chauncey (chair), James Sparrow, Christine
Stansell

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
M.A., American History, 2003

INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON
B.A. History/ English, Highest Honors and with departmental honors in History, 2002