Home • Nicholas L. Syrett

I am a historian of gender, sexuality, and childhood in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. I am currently a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas, where I also serve as an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a professor, by courtesy, in the History Department.

I earned an A.B. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. I am currently a co-editor (with Ishita Pande) of the Journal of the History of Sexuality and president of the Society for the History of Children and Youth. I was co-chair of the Committee on LGBT History from 2015 to 2018 and co-chaired its first two conferences, QHC19 and QHC22. I am co-chairing QHC24, which will take place at Cal State, Fullerton in June of 2024. I serve on the editorial collective for Gender and History and the editorial board for the Gender and American Culture book series at UNC Press.

I am the author of four books and coeditor of one book and two journal issues, which you can read more about on this website. I am working on two edited projects with colleagues: The Cambridge History of Sexuality in the United States (with Jen Manion) and Queer American History: A Reader in Documents and Essays (with Amy Sueyoshi). I have contributed op eds to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, and CNN. I’ve appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition, NBC’s genealogy show, Who Do You Think You Are?, and been interviewed about my research in publications like Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Time, and Teen Vogue.

My fourth book, The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime, was published by the New Press in the fall of 2023. I am represented by Deirdre Mullane of Mullane Literary Associates.