Linda Reeder

Photo of Dr. Linda Reeder
Professor of History and Chair, Women’s & Gender Studies
325 Strickland Hall
573-239-6364
Research Area
Modern Italy, Modern European History, Gender, Women's History, Migration
Education

B.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison, History and Italian, 1985
Ph.D. Rutgers, 1995

Bio

Linda Reeder specializes in modern Italian history. Her research interests focus on gender, sexuality,  migration, national belonging, the history of Italian psychiatry, and the history of emotions.Her first book, Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women (University of Toronto Press, 2003) examines the role Sicilian women who remained at home played in shaping migration networks, and the impact emigration had on women's private and public lives. Her recent work, Italy in the Modern World: Society, Culture, and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2019) is a history of modern Italy centered on gender and mobility. Her current book project, Disordered Houses examines the role of Italian psychiatry in shaping notions of gender, sexuality, and citizenship in the construction of modern Italy.  She is an affiliate faculty member of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at MU.

Dr. Reeder teaches courses on 19th and 20th century European women's history, the history of modern Italy, the history of contemporary Europe, gender history, and migration.

Recent Publications

Widows in White: Migration and the Transformation of Rural Italian Women, Sicily, 1880-1920. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.