Mary K. Trigg retired as Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies in as of January 2025. Trained in women’s history and American Studies, her scholarship focuses on the history of feminism and social movements in the United States; motherhood studies and women, work, and family; and women’s/feminist leadership. Formerly she served as the Director of Leadership Programs and Research at the Institute for Women’s Leadership, and is the founding director of the Leadership Scholars Certificate Program. In her time at Rutgers she also served as Associate Director of the Center for Women and Work.
Trigg is the author or editor of four books: the edited anthology Leading the Way: Young Women’s Activism for Social Change (Rutgers University Press, 2010), the monograph Feminism as Life’s Work: Four Modern American Women through Two World Wars (Rutgers University Press, 2014), Junctures in Women’s Leadership: Social Movements (co-edited with Alison R. Bernstein, Rutgers University Press, 2016 which was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title). Her most recent book is Mothering, Time, and Antimaternalism: Motherhood Under Duress in the United States, 1920-1960 (Routledge, 2023). Trigg also served as consulting editor for the three-volume biographical dictionary Great Lives from History: American Women (Salem Press, 2016). She is currently series editor for Junctures: Case Studies in Women’s Leadership, Rutgers University Press.
Trigg has her Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University, her M.A. in American Civilization from Brown University, her M.A. in English from Carnegie-Mellon University, and earned her B.S. cum laude, from the University of Michigan, Natural Resources.
