Prof. Humez taught in the Women’s Studies Program from 1978 through 2008, chairing the Department from 1998 through 2008. She also taught courses serving the American Studies Department for many years. Her research and writing has been on the social, political and cultural history of U.S. women. She has explored how women with lesser access to literacy in the past have nevertheless been able to make significant marks on this history through religious testimonial and leadership. She is especially interested in how historians and students of literature can learn to work in methodologically sophisticated ways with mediated texts by women who have not been able to write their own stories, including Ann Lee, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. She has published several books and many articles on these questions. In partnership with a colleague at Wheelock College, she has produced a text reader aimed at helping students learn how to analyze mass media representations of gender, race and class.
Teaching
Women and Adventure (WoSt 205G); American Oral History (WoSt 311L); Women in U.S. Social Movements (WoSt 394L); Gender and Sexuality in U.S. History and Culture (AmSt 604).
Selected Publications
Harriet Tubman: The Life and The Life Stories (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).
With Gail Dines, Gender, Race and Class in Media. Second edition. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002).
Mother’s First-Born Daughters: Early Shaker Writings on Women and Religion. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981).
Office: Wheatley, 6th floor, Room 067.
Email: jean.humez@umb.edu
Phone: 617-287-6780