She is an associate professor and department chair of history at Auburn University in Auburn, AL. She received her Ph.D from the University of Virginia, and her B.A. from the University of Kentucky. Her first book, Revolutionizing Expectations: Women’s Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics 1965-1980 examined the role of mainstream women’s organizations such as the YWCA and League of Women Voters in the feminist movement of the 1970s. 

 

Her forthcoming book, Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of the Women who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century, is a group biography of the directors of the Women’s Division of the Democratic and Republican National Committees in the middle decades of the 20th century. It will be published in September 2023 by University of Georgia Press.

 

Melissa is also the co-author, with Maeve Kane and Vanessa Holden, of a new women’s history textbook, American Women: A New Narrative History, which will be published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2024. Her research has been supported by the Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy Presidential Libraries, Auburn’s Office of Research & Economic Development, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation, the Charles Redd Center for Western History at BYU, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.

 

When she isn’t writing or running the department, Melissa is also a Girl Scout troop leader and an unpaid chauffeur for her two active kids. At the end of the day you can find her playing board games with her husband or watching British mysteries with her cat, Colby, on her lap.