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Bonnie Anderson

by JWA Staff
Our work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. We are providing this brief biography for Bonnie Anderson until we are able to commission a full entry.

Cover image of volume one of A History of Their Own, by Bonnie Anderson and Judith Zinsser, a major survey of women's history.

Combatting centuries of sexism that had erased women’s contributions, Bonnie Anderson published one of the first major surveys of women’s history, A History of Their Own. Anderson graduated from Brown University in 1964 and joined the women’s movement while studying at Columbia, where she earned her PhD in 1972. She then began teaching at Brooklyn College and joined the Coordinating Committee for Women in the Historical Profession. Her work in the emerging field of women’s history led to her first major collaboration with Judith Zinsser, A History of Their Own, published in 1988. The book, which offers a detailed survey of women’s lives from prehistory to the present, has remained a watershed for women’s history and has been translated into German, Italian, and Spanish. Anderson’s later works include Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement 1930–1860 (2000) and The Rabbi’s Atheist Daughter: Ernestine Rose, International Feminist Pioneer (2017). Anderson became professor emerita in 2005, but continues to lecture widely on women’s history and related topics.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Bonnie Anderson." (Viewed on March 19, 2024) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/anderson-bonnie>.