Wendy L. Rouse
Historian and Professor
Wendy Rouse is presently Professor of History at San Jose State University where she teaches LGBTQ+ and women’s history. Her historical research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era. Rouse’s most recent book, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (NYU Press), challenges the heteronormative framing of the traditional narrative of the campaign for the vote. Her previous two books explored the history of women and children in the Progressive Era: The Children of Chinatown: Growing up Chinese American in San Francisco, 1850 to 1920 (UNC Press) and Her Own Hero: The Origins of the Women’s Self-Defense Movement (NYU Press).
Rouse’s academic research has also been published in the Pacific Historical Review, the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Western Historical Quarterly, the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Girlhood Studies and the Journal of American Culture.
As the program coordinator for the History/Social Science Teacher Preparation Program at SJSU, Rouse works with future elementary and secondary school teachers. Her research on history education has been published in Teaching History, History Matters, the Social Studies Review, and the History Teacher. In collaboration with community partners such as the California Historical Society, the California History-Social Science Project and the UC Davis History Project, Rouse has designed lessons and resources to help educators teach LGBTQ+ history