Jean Pfaelzer is Professor of English, Women and Gender Studies, and Asian Studies at the University of Delaware. During Spring 2013, she was a Bartlett Giometti Fellow at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Yale University. During spring 2011, she held the Senior Fulbright in American Culture at the University of Utrecht, NL. She is the author of Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (Random House, Hardback & University of California Press, Paperback), the author of four other books including Parlor Radical: Rebecca Harding Davis and the Origins of American Social Realism and The Utopian Novel in America: The Politics of Form. Prof. Pfaelzer is working on two forthcoming books Of Human Bondage: Slavery in California and completing Muted Mutinies: Slave Revolts on Chinese Coolie Ships (both University of California Press). Driven Out was named one of the 100 notable books of the year by the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Top Ten Books of the Year by Choice, and she was named Asian American Hero by Asian Librarians Association.
Jean is on the Scholars Council of the National Women's History Museum and was a consultant on the "1882 Project", a Congressional resolution which passed the US Senate and House of Representative in spring 2012 to acknowledge the history of anti-Chinese legislation. She writes for Huffington Post, History News Network, and The Globalist and speaks frequently on NPR and Pacifica on issues of labor and immigration. Jean is currently on the team curating the exhibit "I Want the Wide American Earth: An Asian Pacific American Story" for the Smithsonian Museum of American History which opened in May 2013. She curated "Asian American Women: A History of Resistance and Resilience" for the National Women's History Museum.
Jean Pfaelzer received her Ph.D. from University College, London, Graduate Certificate in Politics and Culture from Cambridge University (Dir. Raymond Williams) and B.A. and M.A. from Univ. California, Berkeley (Dir. Henry Nash Smith). She has served as Chair of the International Women's Task Force, on the International Committee of ASA, and the Women's Committee of American Studies Association. She has taught and delivered lectures at Xi'an International Studies University, China, and at the Universities of Granada, Malaga, Barcelona, Seville, in Spain; Universities of Utrecht, Leiden, Nijmegen, Netherlands; Univ. at Thessaloniki, GR; University of Norwich, UK, and University of Coimbra, Portugal, amongst other places. She has served as the Executive Director of the National Labor Law Center, and as Senior Legislative Analyst for Hon. Frank McCloskey, US House of Representatives, on issues of immigration, labor, and women. She speaks frequently on National Public Radio on issues of immigration and labor. Jean teaches from an interdisciplinary perspective in undergraduate and graduate studies in Nineteenth Century American Studies, American Realism, American Women Writers, Asian American Culture and History, The Culture of Work, Feminist Theory, and Utopian Culture and Theory. She won the UDEL Mortarboard Award for Outstanding Teacher of the Year.
