Grinnell-in-Washington, D.C.

Victoria Bissell Brown, L. F. Parker Professor of History, grew up in Santa Monica, California and attended U.C.-Santa Cruz for two years before moving with her husband to Madison, Wisconsin in 1969. There, she was active in the anti-war movement and early feminist movement while earning a B.A. degree in American Institututions and a Master's in History from the University of Wisconsin. Prof. Brown earned her Ph.D. at U.C-San Diego, focusing on U.S. social history and U.S. women's history. She taught in the Women's Studies Department at San Diego State University for eight years before joining the History Department at Grinnell, where she teaches Modern U.S. History, U.S. Women's History, U.S. Immigration History, and The Art of Biography. Brown is the author of The Education of Jane Addams (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005) and Going to the Source: The Bedford Reader in American History (Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2005). The opportunity to teach U.S. Immigration History at Grinnell has stimulated Prof. Brown's interest in current immigration policy and she looks forward to the semester in Washington D.C. as a time to deepen her own understanding of contemporary debates about immigration.