Judith R. Walkowitz papers (Ms.2015.010)

Biographical/Historical note

Judith Rosenberg Walkowitz was born on September 13, 1945. She received an undergraduate degree from the University of Rochester with high honors in 1967. She attended graduate school there as well, earning a master’s degree in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1974.

After completing her dissertation, which explored prostitution in the United States during the late nineteenth century, Walkowitz accepted a position as Assistant Professor of history at Rutgers University. She worked there until 1989, becoming Associate Professor in 1979 and Professor in 1984. In 1983, she was Visiting Associate Professor of history at the University of California at Irvine. Since 1989, Walkowitz has been Professor of history and Director of women’s studies at Johns Hopkins University. She has taught on such varied subjects as the history of sexuality, witchcraft and magic, Victorian London, and crime and society in modern Europe.

Walkowitz is the author or editor of “Prostitution and Victorian Society” (1980), “City of Dreadful Delight” (1992), and “Nights Out” (2012), all of which explore issues of sexuality from a historical perspective. She has also published numerous scholarly articles on topics that include Jack the Ripper, feminist historiography, and the politics of prostitution.

Judith R. Walkowitz has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She has served on the editorial board of Victorian Studies since 1992, was the co-organizer of the Gender and Nationalism Conference held at Bellagio, Italy, in 1992, and has served on the Speakers Bureau of the American Historical Association. She also currently serves on the editorial board of differences and the Journal of British Studies. From 1987 to 1990 she served as President of the Berkshire Conference on Women Historians and she has also chaired the Committee on Women Historians of the American Historical Association. Walkowitz has served as a reviewer for the Rockefeller Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and as a consultant to the National Science Foundation.