Lora Wildenthal (born 1965) [1] is an American historian and university professor.
Wildenthal studied German and history at Rice University in Houston, earning her bachelor's degree in 1987. She completed her Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan in 1994. She later taught at Claremont Graduate University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Texas A&M University. Since 2003, she has worked at Rice University, where she holds the John Antony Weir Professorship in History and serves as director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. [2] [3] [4]
Wildenthal’s early research focused on gender in German colonial history as well as human rights movements in postwar West Germany (1945–1990). Her current work examines the history of free wage labor in the early 19th century following the Prussian reforms. [4] [2]
In 2007, scholar Anette Dietrich described Wildenthal’s book German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (2001) as the most comprehensive study to date of the role of white German women in colonialism. [5]