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Amanda Izzo, Ph.D.

Associate Professor


Education

Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University, 2010

M.Phil., American Studies, Yale University, 2006

M.A., American Studies, Yale University, 2005

B.A., Smith College, 1999

Practice Areas

Feminist Theory; Introduction to Sexuality Studies; Global and Transnational Feminism; Women, Faith, and Social Action; U.S. Women’s History

Research Interests

Izzo's work centers on women and social movements in U.S. history. Her book Liberal Christianity and Women's Global Activism: The YWCA of the USA and the Maryknoll Sisters, published in 2018, examines how women's organizations nurtured connections between spirituality and mobilizations for social justice across the twentieth century. Other research has addressed same-sex sexuality in Christianity, the cultural history of feminist movements, and social activism in St. Louis in the 1960s­–70s.

Publications and Media Placements

Co-editor, with Benjamin Looker, Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s, University of Missouri Press, 2022

“‘To Help Them Brush Aside the Limitations That Hold Them Back’: Ruth Porter, Liberal Interracialism, and St. Louis Community Organizing in the Civil Rights Era,” Missouri Historical Review, April 2021

“‘U.S. out of El Salvador!’: The Maryknoll Sisters and the Transnational Struggle for Human Rights,” in People’s Peace: Prospects for a Human Future, ed. Yasmin Saikia and Chad Haines, Syracuse University Press, 2019

Liberal Christianity and Women’s Global Activism: The YWCA of the USA and the Maryknoll Sisters, Rutgers University Press, 2018

“‘By Love, Serve One Another’: Foreign Mission and the Challenge of World Fellowship in the YWCAs of Japan and Turkey,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations, January 2018

“Outrageous and Everyday: The Papers of Gloria Steinem,” Journal of Women’s History, Spring 2002

Honors and Awards

Saint Louis University Scholarly Works Award, 2023, for Left in the Midwest: St. Louis Progressive Activism in the 1960s and 1970s

Mary C. Neth Prize, 2021, by the State Historical Society of Missouri for “‘To Help Them Brush Aside the Limitations That Hold Them Back’: Ruth Porter, Liberal Interracialism, and St. Louis Community Organizing in the Civil Rights Era”

Saint Louis University Scholarly Works Award, 2018, for Liberal Christianity and Women’s Global Activism: The YWCA of the USA and the Maryknoll Sisters