Leora Auslander is Professor of European Social History at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.[1] She specializes in the history of France and Germany, focusing on 19th and 20th century social history; material culture and consumption; gender history and theory; Jewish history; and the history of colonial and post-colonial Europe. Auslander also has plans for a future project on the architectural and urban history of Dakar.
Auslander received her A.B. from the University of Michigan in 1979, her A.M from Harvard University in 1982 and her Ph.D. from Brown University in 1988, where she studied under Joan W. Scott.[2] She joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1987, and, after receiving tenure, was promoted to the rank of full professor. Auslander's work has been generously supported, and she has held prestigious fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study (1992–93) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1995–96) in Palo Alto.[3]
From 1996 to 1999, Auslander served as Director of the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago. [4]
Leora Auslander was a Berthold Leibinger Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany, for Fall 2008.
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Auslander has defined her career in terms of an "intellectual project" in three areas: the history and theory of material culture, feminist history and gender studies, and Jewish Studies. [5] She is primarily known for her work on material culture entitled Taste and Power, which details the history of interior design within modern France. [6]
Although originally from New England, Auslander's travel and life outside the United States as a child and as an adolescent along with her experience as a young adult as a woodworker and furniture maker has exercised particular influence on her intellectual development and choice to go into history.[7]