Jessica Frazier

Biography

Jessica Frazier is an Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island in the History and Gender and Women’s Studies Departments. She earned a PhD in history from SUNY Binghamton with a concentration on women’s history in the 20th century. Her current book project, “Formidable Foremothers of Transnational Feminism in the late Twentieth Century,” traces the genealogy of transnational feminist praxis in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries through collective biography. Her first book, Women’s Antiwar Diplomacy during the Viet Nam War Era (University of North Carolina Press), was chosen as a 2017 Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE magazine and provides a window on the nature of the relationships forged between U.S. women and their Vietnamese counterparts in the 1960s and 1970s. At URI, she enjoys teaching on activism, social justice, and human rights in courses that consider gender, race, and class central categories of analysis.

Education

Ph.D., History, SUNY Binghamton
B.A. B.S., Math and Spanish, Regis University

Selected Publications

Books:

  • “Formidable Foremothers of Transnational Feminism,” (book manuscript in progress).
  • Women’s Antiwar Diplomacy during the Viet Nam War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

Refereed Journal Articles:

  • “Challenging Feminist Stereotypes: Nawal El Saadawi’s Creation of Transnational Solidarity at the UN’s Mid-Decade Conference,” (accepted, Journal of Women’s History).
  • “Collaborative Efforts to End the War in Viet Nam: The Interactions of Women Strike for Peace, the Vietnamese Women’s Union, and the Women’s Union of Liberation, 1965-1968,” Peace and Change, 37, no. 3 (July 2012): 339-365.

Chapters in Edited Collections:

  • “Antiwar Sentiment, International Relationships, and 1960s Social Movements” in The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings & Legacies, eds. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen and Pierre Asselin (in press, Cambridge University Press, 2024).
  • “Women’s Migration and Transnational Solidarity in the Twentieth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Global Migration, Volume II, co-authored with Johanna Leinonen, eds. Marcelo Borges and Madeline Hsu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
  • “From the Classroom to the Public: Engaging Students in Human Rights History,” in The Routledge History of Human Rights, eds. Jean Quataert and Lora Wildenthal (New York: Routledge, 2019), 638-649.

News Articles and Commentaries:

  • “The Best Books on Women and the US war in Vietnam,” Shepherd, August 2021. 
  • “Perspective | Fights among Feminists Aren’t a Sign of the Movement’s Weakness. They’re a Sign of Its Strength.” Washington Post (January 15, 2018) sec. Made by History.