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Contact Info

Email: eryan [at] rider.edu

Department: Department of History and Philosophy

Additional Info:

Academic Focus: History

Teaches modern American history, including courses on politics, culture, women, gender, and sexuality. My research focuses on the intersections between ideas about gender, sexuality, and political culture in the modern United States.  I’ve written on the significance of the family as a social and political construction, the development of modern conservatism in America, and the long history of our present day culture wars. (Ph.D. Brown University)

Education

  • Doctor of Philosophy, History, 2010, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
  • Master of Arts, History, 2002, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
  • Bachelor of Arts, History concentration, 1998, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York

Teaching Positions

  • Professor, 2022-present
  • Associate Professor, 2017-2022
  • Assistant Professor, 2011-2017

Courses Taught at Rider

  • HIS-151: World History from 1500 to the present
  • HIS-181: US History II
  • HIS-218: America Between the Wars
  • HIS-220: History of America’s Culture Wars
  • HIS-260: Craft of History: US and the World
  • HIS-260: Craft of History: the Jazz Age
  • HIS-306: Modern American Cultural History
  • HIS-309: American Women’s History
  • HIS-307: The Immigrant in American Life
  • HIS-319: History of Gender and Sexuality in America
  • HIS-337: Post-1945 American History
  • HIS-398: Special Topics: Modern American Political Culture
  • HIS-460: Historical Methods: Modern American Cultural History
  • HIS-460: Historical Methods: Modern American History
  • BHP-227: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Age of Empire
  • GSS-245: Popular Constructions of Gender and Sexuality
  • GSS-400: Transcultural Seminar in Gender and Sexuality

Awards and Honors

  • Frank N. Elliott Award for Distinguished Service (2021)
  • Ziegler-Gee Award, Rider University and Gender and Sexuality Studies program (2016)

Publications

Books

  • When the World Broke in Two: the Roaring Twenties and the Dawn of America’s Culture Wars. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2018
  • Red War on the Family: Sex, Gender, and Americanism in the First Red Scare. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2014

Peer Reviewed Articles

Articles

  • “Red War on the Family: An Interview with Erica Ryan,” Notches: remarks on the history of sexuality, July 2015. http://notchesblog.com/2015/07/21/red-war-on-the-family-an-interview-with-erica-ryan/
  • “Sheppard Towner Act,” Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age: 1918-1929, James Ciment ed., (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2008)
  •  “Women and Gender,” Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age: 1918-1929, James Ciment ed., (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2008)

Book Reviews

  • Book Review of “Alice Paul: Claiming Power,” by J.D. Zahniser and Amelia R. Fry, in New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol 6, No 2 (2020), 135-139.
  • Book Review of “Protecting the Home Front: Women in Civil Defense in the Early Cold War,” by Michael Scheibach, in H-War, H-Net Reviews, December 2019.
  • Book Review of “American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream,” by Julia Mickenberg, in The American Historical Review, Vol. 123, Issue 4, Oct 2018, 1335-1336.
  • Book Review of “Reproductive Justice: The Politics of Health Care for Native American Women,” by Barbara Gurr, in Women and Social Movements in the United States, September 2015.
  • Book Review of “What Adolescents Ought to Know: Sexual Health Texts in Early Twentieth-Century America,” by Jennifer Burek Pierce, in History: Review of New Books, Vol. 41, Issue 1, 2013, 16.
  • Book Review of “The Masculine Woman in America, 1890-1935,” by Laura Behling, in Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 35, No. 3, June 2006, 384-386.
  • Book Review of “Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare,” by Johanna Schoen on Women and Social Movements in the United States, March 2006.    

Fellowships

  • Rider University Summer Fellowship Award (2012, 2014, 2017)
  • John Lax Fellowship, Department of History, Brown University (2006)
  • Clarke Chambers Travel Fellowship, Social Welfare Archives, University of Minnesota (2005)
  • Sophia Smith Collection, Travel-to-Collection Grant, Smith College (2004)

Presentations and Invited Lectures

  • “Fathers Know Best: The Politics of American Fatherhood at the Cold War’s End.” Berkshire Conference on Women, Genders, and Sexualities, Santa Clara University, CA June 2023
  • “When the World Broke in Two: the Roaring Twenties and the Reshaping of American Culture.” Invited lecture, Somerset County Library, New Jersey, November 2022. 
  • “Making the Public Private: Race and Masculinity in the Fatherhood Responsibility Movement at the End of the Cold War.” Society for United States Intellectual History Conference, Nashville, TN, Oct 2021
  • “Families at the Turning Point: The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement in America at the end  of the Cold War.” Social Science History Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, Nov 2021
  • “An Inclusive History of Women’s Suffrage.” Invited lecture, Moore Library, New Jersey Council for the Humanities Grant, March 2021
  • Chair, “New Jersey Women’s Suffrage: Its Many Faces,” NJ History Conference, NJ Historical Commission, November 2020
  • “When the World Broke in Two: America on the Cusp of the 1920s.” Invited opening plenary at “Un/Tethered: Cather on the Cusp of the 1920s” conference, Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE, June 2020

Public History

Scholarly Interviews

Department Service

  • Internship coordinator, 2021-present
  • Subcommittee on the state of the history major, 2022-2023
  • Worked on revising department P&T criteria to include DEI, 2021-2022
  • Organizer, Faculty film series, History Department, 2012-present

CLAS Service

  • Planned and coordinated Talking About Roe panel for CAS, October 2022
  • Director, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, 2017-present (includes advising minors, planning workload, new courses, creation of a certificate, and the annual colloquium)
  • Developed and led Antiracism in the Academy faculty development program, 2020, 2021, 2022
  • Panelist for CLAS event “Seeing Privilege,” 2019
  • CLAS orientation session leader for shared read, 2017, 2018

University Service

  • Served as liaison for Rider University with the Campus Pride Index, 2022
  • Served on the committee to choose Frank N. Elliot Award recipients, 2022
  • Prepared and delivered panel on sexual orientation and gender identity for new faculty orientation with Ashley Archer, Asst. Director of CDI, August 2021
  • Co-chair of AAUP Subcommittee on DEI, 2021
  • Member, DEI Tripartite Committee 2020-present
  • Secured and set up “Marketing the Movement” pop-up suffrage exhibit in SRC, Oct 2020
  • Panelist, “My Vote Matters,” Center for Diversity and Inclusion Teach-In, Sept 2020
  • Co-chair, LGBTQ+ Tripartite Committee, 2020-present

Professional and Community Service

  • Treasurer, New Jersey Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium, 2021-present
  • Member of Steering Committee, Diversity Discovered, https://diversitydiscovered.org/our-team, 2020-present
  • Historical consultant, “Put NJ Suffragists on the Map,” Alice Paul Institute grant project via New Jersey Historical Commission, 2019-2020
  • Planning Committee, “NJ Women Make History”: New Jersey History Conference, Nov 1, 2019, New Jersey Historical Commission, 2019
  • Planning Committee, NJ Women Vote, Public Programs Committee, 2018-2020
  • Project coordinator, “Suffrage Speaks,” Alice Paul Institute grant project via New Jersey Historical Commission, 2018-2019
  • Co-Chair, New Jersey Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium, Sep 2016-2018

Professional Affiliations

  • American Historical Association
  • Organization of American Historians
  • New Jersey Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium
  • Center for LGBTQ Studies