Elizabeth Reis

Professor

Office	320 Hendricks Hall
Telephone	(541) 346-5904
Email	lzreis@uoregon.edu

Interests

• U.S. Women’s History
• History of Sexuality
• Medical Ethics
• Women and Religion

Affiliation

• Department of History

Research

Elizabeth Reis is currently working on a book titled Private Parts, Public Problems: Genital Surgeries in the U.S. This project will examine American attitudes towards genital surgeries, including neonatal male circumcision, surgeries for female sexual dysfuntion today and hysteria in the past, cosmetic vaginal surgery, castration for sex offenders, and transsexual and intersex surgeries.

Books

• Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009)
• Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997; paper 1999).
• Ed., Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1998).
• Ed., Dear Lizzie: Memoir of a Jewish Immigrant Woman (Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2000).
• Ed., American Sexual Histories: A Blackwell Reader in American Social and Cultural History (London and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001).

Articles

• "Divergence or Disorder? The Politics of Naming Intersex", Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 50:4 (Autumn 2007): 535-43.
• “Hermaphrodites and Same-Sex Sex in Early America,” in Thomas Foster, ed., Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexualities in Early America (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
• “Revelation, Witchcraft, and the Danger of Knowing God’s Secrets,” in Catherine Brekus, ed., Women and American Religion (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
• "Impossible Hermaphrodies: Intersex in America, 1620-1960" Journal of American History 92 (September 2005), 411-41.

Biography

Professor Reis received her BA from Smith College in 1980, her MA in History from Brown University in 1982, and her PhD from UC Berkeley in 1991.