Dr. Susan Freeman
Directory
Susan Freeman
Chair of Gender and Women's Studies
Associate Professor of Gender and Women's Studies
(269) 387-2511
Dr. Susan Freeman specializes in women’s history and LGBT/sexuality studies. Her current research investigates courses in lesbian and gay studies that began over 40 years ago, classes that were a product of gay liberation and lesbian feminist movements. Her essay “Building Lesbian Studies in the 1970s and 1980s” appears in Breaking the Wave: Women, Their Organizations, and Feminism, 1945-1985 (Routledge, 2010). Her earlier work offers a gendered analysis of sex education in mid-twentieth century U.S. public schools. Sex Goes to School: Girls and Sex Education in the 1940s and 1950s was published by University of Illinois Press in 2008.
Prior to joining the faculty at Western Michigan University in fall 2010, Dr. Freeman was an associate professor of Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato and a postdoctoral fellow in Women’s Studies and History at Florida International University. She is a former managing editor for the Journal of Women’s History. Dr. Freeman earned a Ph.D. in history from Ohio State University in 2002 and an M.A. in women’s studies from the University of Cincinnati.