Melissa Kravetz
Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Minor

Melissa Kravetz is an Associate Professor of History and Co-Chair of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Longwood University. Her research and teaching interests include European history, especially Modern Germany, the history of women, gender, and sexuality, food history, the history of science and medicine, and the history of anti-fascism.

She also teaches courses on the history of the Holocaust and Comparative Genocides for K-12 teachers at the Virginia Holocaust Museum's Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute (TEI) in the summers.

She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in History from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in History from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Her book, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics, and Professional Identity came out with the University of Toronto Press in 2019. She appeared on the New Books Network podcast to discuss her book: https://newbooksnetwork.com/melissa-kravetz-women-doctors-in-weimar-and-nazi-germany-maternalism-eugenics-and-professional-identity-u-toronto-press-2019. Her research on women doctors has also appeared in the Journal of Women's History (Spring 2017) and Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists (Cambridge Scholars, 2011). 

Her current research project focuses on the anti-fascist rhetoric of Gerhart Seger, a Social Democratic member of the German Reichstag when Hitler comes to power, who was arrested and imprisoned in Oranienburg before escaping to Prague. She is also editing The Life of Elisabeth Seger: Nazi Resister, Hostage, Wife, and Mother, the memoir of Elisabeth Seger, Gerhart’ Seger's wife.