Ann Hunter Popkin, 1945-

Educator, sociologist, feminist, and activist Ann Hunter Popkin was born on September 21, 1945, to Sally and George Popkin and raised in Long Island, New York. As a teenager, Popkin won the first of many scholastic awards, including an American Field Service scholarship in 1961, for an intercultural summer program that enabled her to travel to Norway as an exchange student. During the 1960s, she also participated in peace marches, and became involved in the civil rights movement, which included organizing food and clothing drives for freedom workers in the South, and registering voters during Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964. An essay based on her experience was published in Letters Home (1965). Popkin also attended the Encampment for Citizenship, a summer youth program founded in 1944 to encourage political activism and volunteerism. Her volunteer activities included working with inner city youth in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York.

Popkin graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1967 and took a year off to work with noted sociologist Noam Chomsky researching the American media's coverage of the Viet Nam war. She attended Brandeis University from 1968 to 1977, earning an M.A. and a Ph.D. Beginning in 1970, she taught introductory classes in sociology at Brandeis and subsequently at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and for numerous women's organizations.

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