Professional Biography

A professor of history, Jane Hunter served as associate dean for four years before assuming the position of interim dean of the college for the year of 2010-2011 and then returning to associate dean for 2011-2012.  As associate dean, she co-chaired a committee supporting student engagement and retention, helping to initiate several new initiatives in that area, and supervised faculty searching and reviews.  In 2009-10, she also co-directed the academic advising office, and coordinated faculty efforts to promote student academic awards and fellowships.

Jane Hunter came to Lewis & Clark in 1990 from Colby College as a professor of American history and gender studies, serving as chair of the History Department for seven years, director of the Gender Studies Program and Symposium, and for one year interim chair of the Art Department. She grew up in a large combined family in Hanover, New Hampshire and has undergraduate and graduate degrees in American Studies from Yale University. Her first book, Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (1984) won Yale University Press’s Governors’ Award, and her second, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (2002) the Outstanding Book prize from the History of Education Society. She and her family lived in Shanghai during 2003-04, where she held a Fulbright lecturing grant at East China Normal University, and she has served as chair of the selection committee for Fulbright lecturers for China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. During the summer of 2005, she participated in an NEH/AHA seminar, “Rethinking America in Global Perspective,” and she has been researching the history of the Peace Corps in the Philippines.  Her most recent publication is an article ““Women’s Mission in Historical Perspective:  American Identity and Christian Internationalism,” in  Competing Kingdoms:  Women, Mission, Nation and American Empire, 1812-1938  (2010).

Academic Credentials

Ph.D. 1981, M.A. 1975, B.A. 1971 Yale University