Contact Information
248 Upham Hall
Oxford, OH 45056
(513) 529-5978
hamlinka@MiamiOH.edu
Office Hours (Fall 2021):
TBD
Title
J&B Lewis Professor of
History; Global and Intercultural Studies (American Studies)
Education
PhD, University of Texas
MA, University of Texas
BA, Georgetown University
Teaching
Dr. Hamlin teaches courses on the cultural history of women, gender, sex, and science/medicine in the U.S.
Research
Dr. Hamlin's research focuses on the histories of women's rights, women's political activism, and the cultural construction of ideas about gender and sex. Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener (W.W. Norton, 2020) reveals the remarkable story of the "fallen woman" who reinvented herself, became one of the most sought-after speakers and writers of the 19th century, charmed her way into the Wilson White House, and steered the 19th Amendment through Congress. Timed to coincide with the 2020 suffrage centennial, Free Thinker centers both sex and race in women's long struggle to attain the vote. This project received support from a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award and the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics.
Hamlin's first book, From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women's Rights in Gilded Age America (University of Chicago Press, 2014) is the first monograph to chart women's responses to evolutionary theory and to analyze the U.S. reception of Darwin through the lens of gender. She has also published articles on Darwin and sexology, the American reception of Darwin, gender in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and the origins of the Miss America Pageant. Her article "'The Case of a Bearded Woman': Hypertrichosis and the Construction of Gender in the Age of Darwin" (American Quarterly, 2011) earned the 2014 Margaret Rossiter Women in Science Prize from the History of Science Society and the 2012 Emerging Scholar Award from the Nineteenth Century Studies Association.
A member of the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program, Hamlin lectures widely throughout the country. She also regularly contributes to the Washington Post and other popular media. Her research on women, gender, science, and politics has been featured in various media outlets including NPR and CBC radio, Vice, and qz.com, and she has contributed to several PBS documentaries. Hamlin has also been involved in multiple women's public history projects and currently serves as historical consultant to the Bearded Lady Project. She lives in Cincinnati where she co-hosts the Mercantile Library's Allgood-McLean "Women You Should Know" Book Discussion Series.
See also:
248 Upham Hall