Karissa Haugeberg is a beneficiary of public schools supported by taxpayers who recognized the value of investing in children and young adults. After receiving her undergraduate education at the University of North Dakota, Karissa worked for Congressman Earl Pomeroy. She received her PhD in history from the University of Iowa. Karissa studies the relationship between gender, race, politics, and medicine in the United States during the twentieth century. She is the Eva-Lou Joffrion Edwards Newcomb Professor in History at Tulane University, where she is an associate professor.
Karissa’s first book, Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century (Illinois, 2017), charted the experiences of women who shaped the contemporary anti-abortion movement. The book received an honorable mention from the Western Association of Women Historians’ Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Book Prize Committee in 2018. An article from the book, “‘How Come There’s Only Men Up There?’ Catholic Women's Grassroots Anti-Abortion Activism,” received the 2016 Judith Lee Ridge Prize for the best article on women’s history. Her research was supported by grants from the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History & Culture at Duke University, and the Newcomb Institute.
With Prof. Cornelia H. Dayton, Karissa co-edited the 9th edition of Women’s America: Refocusing the Past (Oxford, 2019). This textbook offers a range of edited book chapters and scholarly essays as well as primary documents related to the history of women and gender in the United States. Karissa welcomes feedback from students and instructors as she and Prof. Dayton work on the tenth edition, scheduled for publication in 2025.
Karissa’s next book project, “Nursing Revolution: Civil Rights, Feminism, and the American Nursing Profession, 1965-90,” explores how nurses supported and sometimes resisted social justice reforms. An article from the forthcoming book, “Nursing and Hospital Abortions in the United States, 1967-1973,” received the 2019 Stanley Jackson Prize from The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. Other chapters examine the history of hospital desegregation, Filipino immigrant nurses’ experiences working in American hospitals in the 1970s and 1980s, nurses’ work to challenge sexual harassment, and their experiences in the first hospital units dedicated to treating people with AIDS. Karissa’s research and learning has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Louisiana Artists and Scholars (ATLAS) Program, Tulane University’s Office of the Provost, the School of Liberal Arts, and the Newcomb Institute. She is the recipient of a Mortar Board award for excellence in undergraduate teaching and she received the 2022 Faculty Scholar Award from the Newcomb Institute.
With Professors Kate Baldwin and Clare Daniel, she received a Sawyer Seminar grant from the Mellon Foundation to support “The Green New Wave: Reproductive Justice in the Gulf South and Beyond,” which will include seminars, film screenings, and community events related to reproductive health and reproductive justice during the 2024-26 academic years.