Benson, Susan Porter, 1943-2005

The daughter of Alvin and Lorraine Porter, Susan Porter Benson was born in Washington, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1943. She graduated from Simmons College (1964) and earned a Master's degree from Brown University (1968). She began teaching at Bristol Community College in 1968. She took leave to do labor education for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Worker's Union, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities . In 1992, she received funding from NEH to write a book on how families make economic decisions, and in 2002 for a book examining how workers experienced their occupations and managed their work lives. Porter Benson earned a PhD in History from Boston University in 1983. She helped found a cooperative household on Hope Street in Providence, Rhode Island, a haven for aspiring historians. In addition to Bristol Community College (1968-1986), she taught at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom (1984), the University of Missouri-Columbia (1986-1993), Yale University (1998) before coming to the University of Connecticut in 1993 as director of the Women’s Studies Program. In 1998, she returned to full-time teaching and research in the history department at UConn.

The author of several books, many articles and co-editor of a special issue of Radical History Review, Porter Benson generated interest in the study of public history. The influential issue led to her co-editing, along with Stephen Brier and Roy Rosenzweig, of Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public (1986). This collection, in turn, inspired Critical Perspectives on the Past, the popular Temple University Press book series.

Susan Porter Benson died June 20, 2005.

Published Works: Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores , University of Illinois Press , 1986 . Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public , , 1986 . Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture and Society , Pantheon , 1992 . Household Accounts: Working-Class Family Economies in the Interwar USA , Cornell University Press , 2007 .