Professor Judy Barrett Litoff
Judy Barrett Litoff, Professor of History at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, is the author of 14 hardcover books (and eight paperback editions) and more than 100 articles, book chapters, and reviews in American women's history.
She is the author of two pioneering books on the history of American midwifery, American Midwives, 1860 to the Present (1978,1985 paperback edition) and The American Midwife Debate: A Sourcebook on its Modern Origins(1986).
Over the last two decades, Barrett Litoff has focused her research and writing on American women and the Second World War. Her research has included a nationwide search for women’s correspondence that has resulted in the assembling of an archive of 30,000 wartime letters written by American women. These 30,000 letters provide clear and unequivocal evidence of the many important ways that women actively participated in the war effort, and they vividly illustrate women's growing sense of self and their place in the world. In short, they offer perceptive insights into heretofore unexplored, but fundamental, aspects of the war. For additional information about the U.S. Women and Letter Writing Project, go to http://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/ww2letters/ .
Barrett Litoff’s books on World War II include Miss You (1990, 2013 paperback edition), Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front (1991,1995 paperback edition),Dear Boys(1991 hardcover and paperback edition), We’re In This War Too: World War II Letters from American Women in Uniform(1994), Dear Poppa (1997, hardcover and paperback edition), American Women in a World at War(1997, hardcover and paperback editions), What Kind of World Do We Want? American Women Planning for Peace (2000, hardcover and paperback editions), Fighting Fascism in Europe (2003), An American Heroine in the French Resistance (2006, 2008 paperback edition), and Dancing with Colonels (2011), and Bryant College Goes to War (2013).
Barrett Litoff’s innovative research on American women and World War II has been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, and she frequently appears on television and radio. She has lectured widely in the United States, as well as in England, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Republic of Georgia, Russia, and China. She served as an historical consultant for the highly-acclaimed and Emmy nominated PBS documentary, “The Perilous Fight: America s World War II in Color” (2002) and is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Humanities. Barrett Litoff was also the Project Director of a three-year U.S. Department of State grant between Bryant University and the European Humanities University in Minsk, Belarus.
She has served on the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Board of Overseers of the Moses Brown School and the Lincoln School, the Board of Trustees of the Rhode Island Historical Society, the USS Massachusetts Committee, and the RI Black Heritage Society. She also served as the Chair of the Goff Institute for Ingenuity and Enterprise Studies. She is currently a board member of Stages of Freedom and Festival Ballet Providence.
The mother of two adult daughters and six grandchildren. Barrett Litoff lives in Providence, Rhode Island. She is an avid downhill skier and yoga enthusiast.