Profile
Vanessa May is an Associate Professor of History at Hunter College where she teaches courses on the history of women in the United States.
May is a scholar of women, work, labor protections, and the welfare state. Her first book, Unprotected Labor: Household Workers, Politics, and Middle-Class Reform in New York 1870-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), focused on the history of domestic workers, women’s Progressive-Era reform, and protective labor legislation. Her current book project examines the 1950s- and 1960s-era decline of older Progressive maternalists’ political and institutional power in tandem with a larger shift in social welfare policy away from protective policies aimed at women and children. She has written articles published in the Journal of American History, Journal of Women’s History, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, and History Compass. She is the book review editor for Labor: Studies in Working-Class History.