Stephanie Coontz | |
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Stephanie Coontz, speaking at the University of Washington (2012).
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Born | August 31, 1944 |
Nationality | United States |
Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
Occupation | Historian, author, faculty member at The Evergreen State College |
Website | www |
Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of the family and marriage.
Coontz earned a B.A. from the American History Honors Program (1966) at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a member of the campus political party SLATE and participated in the civil rights movement and the Free Speech Movement. Attending the University of Washington on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, she earned a Master of Arts in European History (1970). Abandoning further graduate work, she joined the staff of the National Peace Action Coalition, later becoming a National Coordinator; they focused on building peaceful, legal demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Before returning to full-time teaching in 1975, Coontz also had a leadership role in the Young Socialist Alliance, a Trotskyist youth group of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). By the late 1970s, however, Coontz had parted company with the SWP.
In addition to her current teaching position at Evergreen, Coontz has also taught at Kobe University in Japan and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She won the Washington Governor's Writers Award in 1989 for her book The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. In 1995 she received the Dale Richmond Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for her "outstanding contributions to the field of child development." She received the 2001-02 "Friend of the Family" award from the Illinois Council on Family Relations. In 2004, she received the first-ever "Visionary Leadership" Award from the Council on Contemporary Families.