Laura Ansley
Graduate Student
email: lmansley@email.wm.eduCurrent Research: Girls’ sex education in the 1890s-1920
Bio
Laura Ansley received her B.A. from Case Western Reserve University in history and American studies in 2010, earning honors in history and graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. During her undergraduate years, she participated in the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History's History Scholars program in 2008, presented at the 2010 Phi Alpha Theta Biennial Convention, and wrote a senior thesis and honors thesis on the gendering of heroines and heroes in nineteenth-century western dime novels. Her research interests include women's, gender, and cultural history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her M.A. thesis "The Changing Girl: Sex Education and Prescriptions of White Girlhood" examines sex education books written for girls and young women from the mid-1890s through about 1920. Laura calls Cleveland, OH home, and she is still learning to appreciate a winter without much snow.