Research Interests
My research has focused on women's leadership in historical perspective. My first book, Precious Fire: Maud Russell and the Chinese Revolution, chronicled the life and political activism of a woman who went to China in 1917 as a Young Women's Christian Association foreign secretary. In the midst of China's nationalist and communist revolutions and war against Japan, and through her involvement with the modern Chinese women's movement, Russell was radicalized. With her socialist feminist politics firmly established, Russell returned to the U.S. in 1943, and joined left-wing activists in criticizing American foreign policy during the Cold War era. This study illuminates the complexity of world history and explores women's perspectives on some of the most compelling global issues of the twentieth century.
My current research project focuses on the World Young Women's Christian Association, an international women's organization founded in 1894, and its engagement in international politics in the twentieth century. This organization has long been involved with issues that continue to challenge global feminist activists today, such as how to increase the numbers and influence of women in global policymaking so that patriarchal intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations (and League of Nations before World War II) and national governments address women's needs and priorities, and how to build transnational feminist networks that confront power differences among groups of women. This study explores the World YWCA's activism in relation to the World Disarmament Conference in 1932, the League of Nations study on the Status of Women in the 1930s, the establishment of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in the 1940s and 1950s, and the UN Decade for Women Conferences 1975-1985. It will illuminate the historical development of global feminist movements as well as the evolving role and rising importance of nongovernmental organizations in global policy agenda setting and policymaking.