Participant Info

First Name
Erica
Last Name
Ryan
Affiliation
Rider University
Website URL
https://www.rider.edu/faculty/erica-ryan
Keywords
Women and antiradicalism, modern American political culture, Red Scare, 1920s, the history of the family, culture wars, gender, sex and conservatism
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Erica Ryan is an associate professor of history and director of the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at Rider University. Her teaching focuses on modern American history, including courses on politics, culture, women, gender, and sexuality. She holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College (1998), and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Brown University (2010). Her research focuses on the intersections between ideas about gender, sexuality, and political culture in the modern United States, the significance of the family as a social and political construction, the development of modern conservatism in America, and the long history of our culture wars. Ryan published her first book titled Red War on the Family: Sex, Gender, and Americanism in the First Red Scare with Temple University Press in November of 2014. Her new book, When the World Broke in Two: the Roaring Twenties and the Dawn of America’s Culture Wars, published in September 2018. A comprehensive history of America in the 1920s, the book presents the decades most compelling controversies as precursors to today’s culture wars. In addition, Ryan has published several essays and numerous book reviews.

Recent Publications

When the World Broke in Two: the Roaring Twenties and the Dawn of America’s Culture Wars (Praeger, 2018).

Red War on the Family: Sex, Gender, and Americanism in the First Red Scare (Temple University Press, 2014).

Red War on the Family: An Interview with Erica Ryan http://notchesblog.com/2015/07/21/red-war-on-the-family-an-interview-with-erica-ryan/

Heterosexuality and Americanization: “Social Education” for Immigrant Youth in the 1920s http://notchesblog.com/2015/01/22/heterosexuality-and-americanization-social-education-for-immigrant-youth-in-the-1920s/

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
Modern, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Family, Gender, Sexuality, Women