Gerda Lerner, a Feminist, Historian & UW-Madison Emeritus, Dies at 92

Gerda Lerner, Robinson Edwards Professor Emerita of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died on Wednesday, Jan. 2 in an assisted-living facility in Madison. She was 92 years old.

“Gerda Lerner was fierce, brilliant and unique,” says social and political activist Gloria Steinem. “She lived history by her bravery, restored history by her scholarship and democratized its study by her activism. She understood, as Paula Gunn Allen wrote, that ‘the root of oppression is the loss of memory.'”

Click here to read the full UW-Madison News article

Long before Gerda Lerner helped redefine the study of history to give women a more prominent place in it and before she established the doctorate program in U.S. women’s history at UW-Madison in the 1980s, she had to live through one of history’s worst horrors and — barely — survive it.

Click here to read the full Wisconsin State Journal article.

Gerda Lerner, a scholar and author who helped make the study of women and their lives a legitimate subject for historians and spearheaded the creation of the first graduate program in women’s history in the United States, died on Wednesday in Madison, Wis. She was 92.

Click here to read the full New York Times article/obituary.

Gerda Lerner a bold, creative, crusader for human rights and a writer, historian and intellectual of world wide influence died peacefully the second of January, 2013 at the age of 92. A memorial service will be on April 28th, 2013.