Joan Wallach Scott

Joan Scott is known internationally for writings that theorize gender as an analytic category. She is a leading figure in the emerging field of critical history. Her ground-breaking work has challenged the foundations of conventional historical practice, including the nature of historical evidence and historical experience and the role of narrative in the writing of history, and has contributed to a transformation of the field of intellectual history. Scott's recent books focus on gender and democratic politics. Her works include The Politics of the Veil (2007), Gender and the Politics of History (1988), Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996), and Parité: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism (2005). Scott graduated from Brandeis University in 1962 and received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison  in 1969. Before joining the Institute for Advanced Study, Scott taught in the history departments of Brown University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Rutgers University.