Emeritus Faculty

Associate Professor
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Education

Ph.D. American Civilization, Brown University

M.A. American Civilization, Brown University

M.A. English, Carnegie-Mellon University

B.S., cum laude, University of Michigan, Natural Resources

Biographical Notes

Mary K. Trigg is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Trained in women’s history and American Studies, her scholarship focuses on the history of feminism and social movements in the United States; motherhood studies and women, work, and family; and women’s/feminist leadership. Trigg is also Director of Leadership Programs and Research at the Institute for Women’s Leadership, and is the founding director of the Leadership Scholars Certificate Program. She served as chair of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from 2017-2020. In her time at Rutgers she has also served as Associate Director of the Center for Women and Work.

Trigg is the author or editor of four books: the edited anthology Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change (Rutgers University Press, 2010), Feminism as Life’s Work: Four Modern American Women through Two World Wars (Rutgers University Press, 2014), Junctures in Women’s Leadership: Social Movements (co-edited with Alison R. Bernstein, Rutgers University Press, 2016 which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), and Mothering, Time, and Anti-Maternalism: Motherhood Under Duress in the United States, 1920-1960 (Routledge, 2023). Trigg also served as consulting editor for the three-volume biographical dictionary Great Lives from History: American Women (Salem Press, 2016). She is currently series editor for Junctures: Case Studies in Women’s Leadership, Rutgers University Press. Five out of the projected eight volumes in the series have been completed. Trigg’s current book project is an autoethnography about mothers, daughters, family history, and care.

Awards, Fellowships, and Grants

Winner of 2016 Choice Outstanding Academic Title for Trigg and Bernstein, eds., Junctures in Women’s Leadership: Social Movements (Rutgers University Press, 2016).
School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education 2015, Rutgers University
Institute for Research on Women Fellowship, Rutgers University, 2007-2008
Nominee, Outstanding Woman Educator, Rutgers Women on the Rise, 2007
Program Officer’s Grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for “Re-imagining Work and Community: Perspectives from Professional Women in Dual-Earner Families,” 2001-2003
NHPRC Fellow in Historical Documentary Editing, 1995-1996
Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women's Studies, 1984
Brown University Fellowship, 1981-1985
Carnegie Corporation Grant, Carnegie-Mellon University, 1979-1980
Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship, 1983-1984

Selected Publications

Books

Mary K. Trigg: Feminism as Life’s Work: Four Modern American Women through Two World Wars. Rutgers University Press, 2014. Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change. Rutgers University Press, 2010. (Edited by Mary K. Trigg).

Junctures in Women’s Leadership: Social Movements. Rutgers University Press, 2016. (Edited with Alison R. Bernstein).

Feminism as Life’s Work: Four Modern American Women through Two World Wars. Rutgers University Press, 2014.

Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change. Rutgers University Press, 2010. (Edited anthology.)

Articles

Professor Trigg’s articles and reviews have appeared in leading journals including:

The American Historical Review
American National Biography
Community, Work & Family
Initiatives
Journal of Women’s History
Liberal Education
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
Transformations

Professor
Research Interests: As an Americanist who specializes in African American and American Women’s history, Professor White is especially interested in issues of identity and the intersection of race, class, gender and sexuality.
Education: Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago M.A., Columbia University B.A., Harpur College, SUNY Binghamton