Simmons College

Laura Prieto received her B.A. from Wellesley College, and her A.M. and Ph.D. in History from Brown University. She teaches courses in American cultural history, women and gender, race formation, sexuality, and historical methodology. Her essay on early 20th-century women missionaries to the Philippines appears in the anthology, Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and American Empire (Duke University Press, 2010). She recently published an online project on American feminist abolitionists in Women and Social Movements in the United States (womhist.alexanderstreet.com). Her book, At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America (Harvard University Press, 2001) studies how women painters, sculptors, and illustrators created a professional identity for themselves in the face of exclusion. Her ongoing research centers on American women, colonized women, and imperialism during the era of the Spanish-American War. She is also at work on a book surveying "Women in America: Issues and Controversies" for Facts on File.