Instructor

Professor Lee Chambers, History

Lee Chambers grew up in Cold War Los Alamos. After graduating from Los Alamos High School in 1966 she reversed the 19th century adage of “go west young man” and went east instead, to Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She may have overshot the mark here, using a ruler as a guide to the “school farthest from” which is not a recommended way to select a college. So she returned to New Mexico to work each summer, taking on such diverse jobs as breaking up glass slides of weapons blueprints at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (for purposes of disposal) and as a VISTA volunteer in the Spanish land grant community of Petaca. Her graduate work in American Studies was done at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She came to the University of Colorado Boulder as Director of the nascent Women Studies Program and an Assistant Professor of History in the fall of 1976, happy once again to be living, working, and playing in the mountains. Although this project focuses on the 20th century, most of Professor Chambers’ career as an historian has focused on the early 19th century, with an emphasis on women – the never married, siblings, and reformers (abolitionists in particular). A President’s Teaching Scholar, Chambers teaches courses on U.S. Women’s History, Gender in American History, Jacksonian America, and Women, Gender, and War.