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Dennis A Deslippe Professor of American Studies and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Department Chair of American Studies

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dennis.deslippe@fandm.edu

Biography

Dennis Deslippe is a professor of American Studies and Women's,  Gender & Sexuality Studies at Franklin & Marshall College where he has taught since 2006.  Before coming to F&M he taught at the Australian National University.  Deslippe received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1994.

Deslippe’s scholarship and teaching focus primarily on the intersection of politics, law, and twentieth century social movements.  He teaches on "Gender at Work,"  “American Masculinities," and “American Women & Social Movements since 1900" as well as “Studying America,” a required course on theory and methods for American Studies majors.  In addition he offers his Connections course, “Progress & Its Critics,” on a regular basis.

His current research project is "The Urban Citizen,"  a history of social and economic citizenship in America's cities since the 1960s. Deslippe is the author of two books, Protesting Affirmative Action: The Struggle over Equality after the Civil Rights Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) and   “Rights, not Roses”: Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism (University of Illinois Press, 2000). He is the co-editor (with Eric Fure-Slocum and John McKerley) of Civic Labors: Scholar Activism and Working-Class Studies (University of Illinois Press, 2016). In addition, his research essays have appeared in the Journal of American History, Journal of Policy History, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Journal of Urban History, Journal of Civil and Human Rights, Journal of Women’s History, International Labor and Working-Class History, and the Australasian Journal of American Studies. In support of his research he has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant, Australian National University Faculty Research Grant, Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Grant, and a Schlesinger Library Research Support Grant.

Recent Publications

  • “BUILD, Baltimore’s Working Poor, and Economic Citizenship in the 1990s,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 6, no.1 (Spring/Summer 2020): 31-60. 
  • "'As in a Civics Text Come to Life': The East Brooklyn Congregations’ Nehemiah Housing Plan and “Citizens Power” in the 1980s," Journal of Urban History 45, no. 5 (September 2019). 
  • “For Faith and Free Markets: The Lay Commission and Conservative Catholics in the 1980s” Journal of Policy History 28, no. 4 (October 2016).