Ann Lane

After graduation, for several years I worked on an economics magazine published by New York University before deciding to go to graduate school. My field was U.S. History, specializing in African-American history, and I wrote a dissertation on that subject. (I defended my dissertation at Columbia University when I was seven months pregnant and on the day of the Columbia bust in 1968. Did anyone read it? Probably not, including my dissertation advisor, Richard Hofstader.)

When the woman's movement hit the academy, I began to teach and write in women's history, And I still am. I founded and headed the Women's Studies program at Colgate University from 1983 to 1990. I headed the same program at the University of Virginia for the next thirteen years, at which time I retired as director but am still teaching full time. I have also taught at Rutgers University, Douglass College, and John Jay College.

I have published a reasonable amount of books and am finishing my latest one on the subject of consensual sex bewteen faculty and students in the American academy. We all know that sexual harrasment is illegal and also wrong. What about consensual sex? Is it consensual or "consensual"?