Participant Info

First Name
Karen
Last Name
Dunak
Country
United States
State
OH Ohio
Affiliation
Muskingum University
Website URL
https://www.muskingum.edu/academics/history/faculty
Keywords
women, gender, feminism, media, celebrity, First Ladies, weddings, romance, social movements, youth
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Karen Dunak, Ph.D., a historian of modern American life and culture, is currently writing a book about media responses to and representations of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  She is the author of As Long As We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America (New York University Press, 2013) and a contributing author to Of The People: A History of the United States (Oxford University Press, Fifth Edition, 2021). In addition to edited collections and scholarly journals such as Gender & History, The Journal of Popular Culture, The OAH Magazine of History, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, her work has appeared in Public Books, Salon, and The Washington Post.

She is Professor and Arthur G. and Eloise Barnes Cole Chair of American History at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio where she teaches the US history survey, a survey of American women’s history, and a variety of topics courses on Modern US history (1950s America, 1960s & American film, Youth in Modern America, for example) and serves as co-advisor to the Gender Studies program.

Dunak holds a BA from American University and an MA and Ph.D. from Indiana University.

Recent Publications

With Shannon Smith, “‘We Made the Best Out of a Situation That Was Bad’:  School Closings in Modern American Education,” The American Historian, Dec. 2020.

“Romance,” in The Routledge History of American Sexuality, ed. Kevin P. Murphy, Jason Ruiz, and David Serlin (New York: Routledge, 2020).

“Jackie Reconsidered, Again: Jacqueline Kennedy and 1960s-Era American Womanhood,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, published online, Oct. 2017, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17541328.2017.1381797.

“How Serena Williams’ baby shower helped those who want to make America great again,” “Made by History,” Washington Post, August 15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/08/15/how-serena-williamss-baby-shower-helped-those-who-want-to-make-america-great-again/?utm_term=.f2455b0c0319.

Review, Jackie, Journal of American History 104 (June 2017), 305-307.

“Shirley Jackson’s Two Worlds,” publicbooks.org, May 30, 2017, http://www.publicbooks.org/shirley-jacksons-two-worlds/.

“Marriage,” in Gender: Love, ed. Jennifer C. Nash (Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan, 2016).

As Long as We Both Shall Love: The White Wedding in Postwar America (New York University Press, August 2013).

“‘Heed your creed, fall in love and get married’: New Left Ideology and Romantic Relationships,” Journal of American Culture (March 2013), 25-31.

“Teaching the Many Americas of the 1950s,” OAH Magazine of History (October 2012), 13-16.

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