Faculty Profiles

Professor Dirks was educated at Reed College and Yale University. She is a veteran teacher of undergraduate U.S. history. She has taught classes on U.S. cultural and political history, the history of western consumer culture, U.S. women's history, the history of the nineteenth-century family, and twentieth-century gender and sexuality. Professor Dirks also participates in Reed’s American Studies colloquium. Her current research project is tentatively titled Giving Women Credit and focuses on twentieth-century American women's claims to citizenship rights based on their economic roles as consumers, wage earners and heads of household. She recently contributed a review essay to the Oregon Historical Quarterly's special issue to mark the state centenary of woman suffrage: "The Straight State of Oregon: Notes Toward Queering the History of the Past Century."