Estelle Freedman

Estelle Freedman (born 1947) is an American historian.

She is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford University She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College in 1969 and her Master of Arts (1972) and PhD (1976) in history from Columbia University.

She has taught at Stanford University since 1976 and is a co-founder of the Program in Feminist Studies.

Her research has explored the history of women and social reform, including feminism and women's prison reform, as well as the history of sexuality, including the history of sexual violence.

Freedman is the recipient of four teaching awards at Stanford as well as the Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for graduate mentorship from the American Historical Association and the Millicent McIntosh Award for Feminism from Barnard College.

She has received numerous research fellowships, including grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

She has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and at the Stanford Humanities Center.

Her first book, Their Sisters' Keepers received the Alice and Edith Hamilton Prize for best scholarly manuscript on women from the University of Michigan in 1978 and was published in 1981.

She has won the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize from the Western Association of Women Historians three times: in 1982 for Victorian Women: A Documentary Account (shared), in 1997 for Maternal Justice, and in 2014 for Redefining Rape. Redefining Rape also won the 2014 Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians and the 2014 Emily Toth Award (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association).

Her earlier co-authored book with John D'Emilio, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, was cited by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his 2003 opinion for Lawrence v. Texas, with which the American Supreme Court overturned all remaining anti-sodomy laws.

Her book My Desire for History, coedited with John D'Emilio, received the 2013 John Boswell Prize from the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association.