Deborah Valenze

Deborah M. Valenze (born 1953) is an American historian who is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor at Barnard College in New York. She has written a number of books with subjects including early British women preachers and the global history of milk.

Deborah M. Valenze
Born1953
NationalityAmerican
EducationRadcliffe College
EmployerBarnard College
Known forHistory professor and author

Life

Valenze was born in 1953. When she was eight she learned the violin and this was a life-long passion.[1] When she was eighteen she went to what was then Radcliffe College to study, where she devoted a lot of time to extra-curricular activities.[1]

She gained her doctorate at Brandeis University and she taught there and at Smith College and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

In 1985 she published "Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England". The book shows how the emergence of women preachers enabled them to question the values of society and to be empowered.[2] For instance she argues that the importance of Methodist preacher Mary Taft's rebellion against discrimination created a focus for revision which had "universal significance".[3]

In 1989 she became an assistant professor at Barnard College[4] after the post was recommended for her by her husband.[1] In 1995 her book about "The First Industrial Woman" was published.[5]

Valenze is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College which is for women studying with Columbia University.[6] Her book about The Social Life of Money in the English Past was proposed as one of the best books of the year in 2006 by the British historian Eric Hobsbawm.[7] Valenze was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship,[8] and she published her history of milk, in 2011.[9] A review in the UK noted the books "fascinating history" that included how milk could be in short supply as followers of Ganesh would feed an estimated million litres of milk to statues. However the book did not fully address the recent decline in global sales of milk. Milk that is delivered by cows who never saw a field of grass.[10]

In May 2023 she was scheduled to give an on-line talk about the history of milk for the Wellcome Foundation.[6] Her 2023 book is The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History.[6]

References
  1. "Professor Pro-Tips: Deborah Valenze - Columbia Spectator". Columbia Daily Spectator. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  2. Valenze, Deborah M. (2017-03-21). Prophetic Sons and Daughters. ISBN 978-0-691-62833-2.
  3. Valenze, Deborah M. (1 December 1985). Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-4350-3.
  4. "Deborah Valenze | Barnard College". barnard.edu. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  5. Valenze, Deborah M.; Valenze, Assistant Professor of History Barnard College Deborah (1995). The First Industrial Woman. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-508982-0.
  6. "Milk Matters". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  7. Hooker, Ginny; Hooker, Research by Ginny (2006-11-25). "Take a leaf out of their books". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  8. Guggenheim 2011 fellowship to study British History
  9. Valenze, Deborah (2011-06-28). Milk: A Local and Global History. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-17539-4.
  10. Renton, Alex (2011-07-29). "Milk: A Local and Global History by Deborah Valenze – review". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
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