Gerda Lerner

Gerda Lerner (born April 30, 1920) is a historian, author and teacher. She is a professor emerita of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a visiting scholar at Duke University. Lerner is one of the founders of the field of women's history, and is a former president of the Organization of American Historians. Lerner played a key role in the development of women’s history curricula. She taught what is considered to be the first women’s history course in the world at the New School for Social Research in 1963. She was also involved in the development of similar programs at Long Island University (1965–1967), at Sarah Lawrence College from 1968 to 1979 (where she established the nation's first Women's History graduate program), at Columbia University (where she was a co-founder of the Seminar on Women), and since 1980 as Robinson Edwards Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She also wrote the screenplay for her husband Carl Lerner’s film Black Like Me in 1966. Lerner was born Gerda Kronstein in Vienna, Austria on April 30, 1920, the first child of Ilona and Robert Kronstein, an affluent Jewish couple.

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