Kathy Peiss received her Ph.D. from Brown University in 1982. Her research specialties include the history of American women, gender, sexuality, leisure, consumption, and popular culture. She is the author of Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (1998) and Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (1986), co-author of Men and Women: A History of Costume, Gender, and Power (1989), and co-editor of Passion and Power: Sexuality in History (1989). Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including Genders, Social Problems, Business History Review, The Nation, Journal of American History, and Women's Review of Books.… She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.