Professional Affiliation

Professor Emerita, History and Women's and Gender Studies, University of Maryland

Expert Bio

Sonya Michel is a professor emerita of History, American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. With a PhD from Brown University, she was a founding editor of the journal Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, and she has written widely on women, gender and social policy. Among her books are Children's Interests/Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy (Yale UP, 1999); and Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World (Columbia UP 2017), co-edited with Yasmine Ergas and Jane Jenson. Since retirement, Sonya Michel has become an artist; she is currently a member of Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC. And she is continuing to address issues of gender and social policy through her journalism.

Major Publications

• Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World, co-edited with Yasmine Ergas and Jane Jenson (Columbia University Press, October 2017).

• Gender, Migration and the World of Care: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Pacific Rim, co-edited with Ito Peng (Palgrave Macmillan, September 2017).

• Civil Society and Gender Justice: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, co-edited with Karen Hagemann and Gunilla Budde (Berghahn Books, 2008)
• Child Care at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring, co-edited with Rianne Mahon (Routledge, 2002)
• Children's Interests / Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy (Yale University Press, 1999)
• Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, co-edited with Seth Koven (Routledge, 1993)
• Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, co-edited with Margaret Higonnet, Jane Jenson and Margaret Weitz (Yale University Press, 1987)
• The Jewish Woman in America, with Charlotte Baum and Paula Hyman (Dial Press, 1975)

Previous Terms

Former Director of United States Studies and Senior Scholar, Wilson Center