Our Faculty and Staff

Anya Jabour

Regents Professor of History

Contact

Office
LA 254
Email
anya.jabour@umontana.edu
Office Hours

No regular office hours during sabbatical, 2023-2024. Scheduled meetings will be conducted via Zoom (use this link to enter the "waiting room").

Website
anya.jabour.com
Curriculum Vitae
View/Download CV

Personal Summary

Anya Jabour is Regents Professor of History. An expert in gender, society, and politics in the US, she teaches courses in US women’s history, family history, and southern history as well as upper-division and graduate courses focused on historical research and writing. Professor Jabour was the 2001 recipient of the Helen and Winston Cox Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 2014 recipient of the Paul Lauren Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award.

She has authored four books, Marriage in the Early Republic, Scarlett’s SistersTopsy-Turvy, and Sophonisba Breckinridge, and has edited a collection on Major Problems in the History of American Families and Children and another on Family Values in the Old South, and has published numerous articles and essays. She also served as a historical consultant for the PBS Civil War miniseries, Mercy Street

The Director of the Public History Program, she regularly contributes to The Conversation and to the Washington Post. Her research has been featured in the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and Newsweek.

Professor Jabour's current book project, tentatively titled "Progressivism Personified: Katharine Bement Davis and American Politics," explores US politics through the lens of the life of a prison reformer, political appointee, party politician, suffrage activist, and sex researcher who lived from 1860 to 1935.

In 2013, Professor Jabour was named the University of Montana's Distinguished Scholar. In 2014 she received the George M. Dennison Presidential Faculty Award for Distinguished Accomplishment. In 2016 she was appointed Regents Professor, the highest honor in the Montana University System.

Professor Jabour advises graduate students in all periods of U.S. history whose interests intersect with her specialties in gender, sexuality, and politics. Her current and former graduate students work on topics such as marriage and divorce in the Old South; courtship and family life in the Victorian West, prostitution policies in the Progressive Era, and African American women’s role in the Civil Rights Movement. Several of her students also complete a Graduate Certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, an interdisciplinary program that offers opportunities to work with faculty in other departments as well as funding to support research and scholarship on women, gender, and sexuality. Please contact her by e-mail if you are interested in working with her as a graduate student.

Education

PhD, Rice University, 1995
MA, Rice University, 1994
BA, Oberlin College, 1991

Courses Taught

Women in America:  From the Colonial Era to the Civil War

Women in America:  From the Civil War to the Present

The American South:  From Slavery to Civil Rights

Families and Children in America from the Colonial Era to the Present

Introduction to Historical Methods

Graduate Seminar:  U.S. Women’s History

Graduate Seminar: Gender, Society, and Politics in the U.S.

Graduate Research Seminar

Writing Women’s Lives: Biography, Microhistory, and Local History

Born in the U.S.A.: American History through Children’s Eyes (adult education)

Women’s Rights and Women’s Roles Around the World (global leadership initiative first-year seminar)

Women’s Activism and Human Rights in the U.S. (adult education)           

Confederate, Union, and Contraband: The Drama of the Civil War (adult education)

Field of Study

U.S. Social, Political, and Cultural History; Progressive Era and New Deal; Women, Family, Gender, and Sexuality; the American South

Selected Publications

Books:

Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing Women's Activism in Modern America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.

Topsy-Turvy: How the Civil War Turned the World Upside Down for Southern Children.  New York: Ivan R. Dee, 2010.

Family Values in the Old South. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010.

Scarlett's Sisters: Young Women in the Old South.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Major Problems in the History of American Families and Children.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2005.

Marriage in the Early Republic: Elizabeth and William Wirt and the Companionate Ideal.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Recent Articles:

“Claims of protecting sex workers have long been used to punish them,” Washington Post, August 12, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/08/12/claims-protecting-sex-workers-have-long-been-used-punish-them/

 “An ‘Adamless Eden for Female Offenders’?: Katharine Bement Davis and the Carceral State in Progressive-Era New York,” SHGAPE, July 13, 2021, https://www.shgape.org/an-adamless-eden-for-female-offenders/

“Mothers have long used their identities to push for social change,” Washington Post, May 9, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/05/09/mothers-have-long-used-their-identities-push-social-change/

“It’s Up to the Women’: Eleanor Roosevelt, Women’s Activism, and Human Rights,” January 2021, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/elro/learn/historyculture/it-s-up-to-the-women.htm

“Referring to female PhDs as ‘Dr.’ promoted equal treatment and values women’s work,” Washington Post, December 15, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/12/15/calling-female-phds-dr-promotes-equal-treatment-values-womens-work/

“The Depression-era lessons that can solve today’s eviction crisis,” Washington Post, Sept. 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/04/depression-era-lessons-that-can-solve-todays-evictions-crisis/

“Immigrant workers have borne the brunt of covid-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants: How dire conditions in meatpacking inspired broad worker and immigrant advocacy in the early 20th century,” Washington Post, May 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/22/immigrant-workers-have-born-brunt-covid-19-outbreaks-meatpacking-plants/

“As our meat, poultry supply dwindles, we should remember why,” Washington Post, April 21, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/21/our-meat-pork-poultry-supply-dwindles-we-should-remember-why/

 “When Lesbians Led the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” The Conversation, January 24, 2020, https://theconversation.com/when-lesbians-led-the-womens-suffrage-movement-129867

“Same-Sex Couples Have Been in American Politics Way Longer than the Buttigiegs Have Been Married,” The Conversation, May 17, 2019, https://theconversation.com/same-sex-couples-have-been-in-american-politics-way-longer-than-the-buttigiegs-have-been-married-116568 

 “Why Women’s Peace Activism in World War One Matters Now,” The Conversation, April 2, 2017, https://theconversation.com/why-womens-peace-activism-in-world-war-i-matters-now-75254

“100 Years of the ‘Gender Gap’ in American Politics,” The Conversation, November 24, 2016, https://theconversation.com/100-years-of-the-gender-gap-in-american-politics-67833

 “Prostitution Politics and Feminist Activism in Modern America: Sophonisba Breckinridge and the Morals Court in Prohibition-Era Chicago,” Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall 2013), 143-166.