Gina Luria Walker

Gina Luria Walker is professor emerita of women's studies and director of a web-based resource about women called The New Historia. She teaches women's intellectual history, and is an expert on eighteenth-century feminist intellectual Mary Hays and her circle. Walker produced the first contemporary scholarly edition of Hays's major work, Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries.

Walker's focus is recovering lost contributions of women. In 2015, Walker worked with the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum to direct Project Continua, a website of female biographies. Her latest work in recovering women displaced from the historical record is The New Historia, a project that is an encyclopedia of female networks and intellectual contributions. The project launched online in March 2022. Her collaborator on this project is information architect Lisa Strausfeld, and together their vision is to create a "Google Earth for knowledge."

Walker has held faculty appointments at Rutgers University, Northwestern University (as the Assistant Director of the Program on Women), and as a Guest Facility at Sarah Lawrence College. Walker retired from The New School after 32 years and is now Professor Emerita of Women's Studies.

Biography Gina Luria Walker received her Ph.D. in 18th Century Literature from New York University, where she was awarded the Founders' Day Award for doctoral studies. These included her discovery of primary documents by and about Mary Hays (1759–1843) in private hands, now part of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle at The New York Public Library. Her areas of research include the history of learned women, women and Rational Dissent, late Enlightenment Feminisms, and women's autodidactic production of new knowledge.

Walker is a member of the International Advisory Board, UDC International Doctoral School, Universidade da Coruña, Spain and on the Advisory Editorial Board, Enlightenment and Dissent, Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies, Queen Mary University of London. She is involved in encouraging new Wikipedia encyclopedia articles on historical women and is an authority on historical encyclopedias.

At Columbia, where she pursued a Master's Degree, she intended to study the writer Jane Austen, placing her in the intellectual spectrum of the late Enlightenment. The graduate student adviser discouraged her by saying, "All you Barnard girls want to write about Austen. There is nothing more to be learned about Jane Austen." The professor directed Walker to write her thesis on the personal writings of James Boswell using his recently discovered journals as source material, viewed through the prism of Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943). Her advisor praised her thesis but told her she was "too pretty to bother getting a Ph.D." and advised her to "go home and get married."

Greatly discouraged, she applied to New York University to pursue doctoral research. She explained to the Graduate Advisor more carefully that she wanted to study "a highly self-conscious woman on the margins of the late Enlightenment".She had the good fortune to be introduced to Kenneth Neill Cameron (1908–1994), an Oxford-trained scholar and expert on Percy Bysshe Shelley, who became her dissertation director. Cameron agreed that she could study Jane Austen.

Eventually, the owner of the letters allowed Walker to view the 115 private letters to and from Hays in correspondence with Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Robert Southey, Eliza Fenwick and others. In her 2018 essay "I Sought & Made to Myself an Extraordinary Destiny," Walker describes the relationship between a female scholar and her subject. Amid contemporaneous "textual sabotage" that depicted Hays as unpleasant and sexually immoral, Walker recounts the journey to redefine Hays's legacy through her revolutionary accomplishments. Walker's experience with Hays was complicated:

"While I wanted to understand, empathize with, and defend Hays, her authorial self was so unlike the wise, steady persona presented by Austen's narrators that had inspired me, that I, too, could not warm to her. She was angry, self-pitying, narcissistic, filled with resentment and yearning. Her unquiet spirit struggled against the tide of responses to her as unlovely, abrasive, and unlovable, confirmation that no respectable man would want her. Studying Hays seemed to take me further away from the apparently safe, hallowed shores of the Canon. I felt adrift; as an uncredentialled female autodidactic, Hays offered no safety."

Hays's instinct to document the lives of neglected historical women inspired the trajectory of Walker's career.

The Invention of Female Biography (2019) Source:

The Invention of Female Biography contains essays from 14 members of the Female Biography Project (FBP) and documents the international scholarly collaboration that produced Walker's groundbreaking contribution to feminist historical recovery. Between 2009 and 2014, 168 scholars across 18 countries participated in the FBP, an unprecedented mission that created the Chawton House Library edition of Mary Hays's Female Biography; or, Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women of All Ages and Countries (1803). The project includes biographies and references to additional source material for scholars interested in conducting further research.

Project Continua's feminist work on Wikipedia was featured on Buzzfeed's list of "18 Badass Women You Probably Didn't Hear About In 2014."

In 2015, Walker collaborated with the Sackler Senior Curator, Catherine Morris, on a symposium. Titled "Revising Revisionism," the event was presented by The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center at The Brooklyn Museum with Project Continua. "Revising Revisionism" examined "the intersection of biography, art, history, historiography, and feminism—fields that align and diverge—by bringing together practitioners from different disciplines.

Wikipedia Disturbed by the gender disparity of Wikipedia's content, Walker started an Edit-A-Thon in 2015 to train more women as Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia is the Internet's largest source of free information, yet less than ten percent of Wikipedia editors are women, and only six percent of experienced editors are women. This is reflected in the site's content which is distorted in favor of men's contributions to science and philosophy. "The pages that do exist about notable women are more likely to mention their gender and relationship status than articles about men."

"There needs to be a conscious collaborative determination by women, including girls, that we want to know about women of the past, we want to have access to our foremothers, and that we want to revise history", Walker said.

The New Historia Website, thenewhistoria.org

In 2018, to create an entirely new approach to feminist history, Walker began enlisting specialist scholars to examine important female figures throughout history and prevent women from "just being stirred in." As an easily navigable website, also referred to as "a Wikipedia for significant yet unseen women," The New Historia calls for accuracy and accountability in imagining undiscovered women. Walker's efforts intend to uncover buried women by making their work public and easily accessible. The New Historia was launched online by LopezLab in March 2022. The event was titled "Anonymous No More: Recovering Women from the Past to Change Our Future."

In coordination with The New Historia's website launch, Walker held an event called "The City of Ladies" at the New School in 2022. In October 2023, The New Historia hosted an event at The New School to discuss Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, a book by writer and New Historia contributor Elizabeth Winkler. In February 2024, The New Historia hosted an in-person event at the Strand Bookstore in New York City, featuring writer and historian Barbara Savage, who discussed her book Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar. Savage was joined by New Historia contributors Gina Luria Walker, Nancy Kendrick, and Namita Luthra.

The New Historia collaborated with the University of Edinburgh and the Institut Français d'Ecosse in October 2024 on "Missing Matter," a "series of conferences discussing feminist historiography." It was organized by Prof. Gina Luria Walker, Dr. Séverine Genieys-Kirk, head of French and Francophone Studies at The University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Carme Font-Paz, Associate Professor of English Literature at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and Research Associate at the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Gina Luria Walker and The New Historia Chair Lisa Metcalfe launched a series of Salons in Rhinebeck, New York, to further spread The New Historia's message and philosophy. Commencing in 2025, the Salons facilitate conversations with acclaimed feminist historians, authors, editors, and creatives. Past topics have included feminist musical composition, women in medical education, and the life of Toni Morrison. The New Historia Salons are ongoing.

In March 2026, The New Historia gathered for "Finding Mary Shelley" at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck, New York, for an evening of film, scholarship, and conversation dedicated to Mary Shelley - the author whose creation became legend. The event brought together experts on Frankenstein's author, Mary Shelley. Only a teenager when the iconic monster tale was written, Shelley — and women in general — are often overlooked in the many film adaptations of the story. Area experts presented clips from Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein (2025) and discussed where Mary Shelley is (and isn't) in the film.

Women and textiles Looking for unrecognized ways women created and produced knowledge and influence outside the traditional narrative, Walker studies the history of women and textiles. Textile production has historically been a trade associated with women. Walker researches women's global influence in the textile trade from the Bronze Age through the medieval period. By examining these textiles, she uncovers the "text" embedded within the work. From these "texts," the lives and work of invisible female artisans is revealed, and history is better represented through their intricacies. Walker spoke at the Talking Textiles Conference in 2020, highlighting the role of textiles in feminist historical recovery.

Professorial and Educational Work Gina Luria Walker served as Assistant Director of the Program on Women at Northwestern University. The Program was established in 1973 and focused "on the causes, concomitants and consequences of present alterations in sex roles and sex stereotypes and [exploring] the implications of these changes for personal, social, and institutional adjustment."

As Professor of Women's Studies at The New School for Social Research and Schools of Public Engagement (1993-2025), Walker taught undergraduate and graduate courses rooted in women's intellectual history and feminist historical recovery. Walker taught classes including "Becoming Visible," "Female Biography, Novels, Memoirs: Are Women's Truths in Their 'Fictions'?" and "Revolutionary Women" during her 32-year Professorship at The New School.

During her career at The New School, Walker participated in programming, online content, and panels. For instance, she was featured in the 2020 "The Women's Legacy Project" series on YouTube, a video program that shares the stories of underrepresented women, produced by The New School. In 2013, the Vera List Center hosted a conference organized by Carin Kuoni, Director of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, and Gina Luria Walker called "Toward a More Perfect History for the 21st Century." The discussion "analyzes the impulse to risk self-writing, features women's self-representation over time in letters, journals, novels, and other genres, and examines how self-writing has functioned as a vehicle for mentoring, instruction, and inspiration for women." Walker was also a panelist at the 2015 event "Emma at 200: Feminist Style," hosted by The New School, which celebrated the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's Emma. In 2025, Walker's accomplishments in feminist historical recovery were celebrated at "Becoming Visible, Staying Visible: 50 Years of Taking a Stand with Dr. Gina Luria Walker," hosted by The New School at Wollmann Hall. The event's speakers included Walker's colleagues, academic collaborators, and students.

Pedagogy Gina Luria Walker's progressive pedagogical approach acknowledges that women "have always been deliberately left out of the established cultures of teaching, learning, and new knowledge production." She ultimately took an adjunct position at The New School.

Gina Luria Walker has one son and married Chauncey Walker, a lawyer, in 1989, and welcomed three stepsons and their families.

Advocacy and Views Walker has consistently advocated for women's inclusion in academic spaces and access to new knowledge systems, challenging male-dominated interpretations of teaching and learning that have historically excluded women. Walker believes in restructuring human history beyond simply including women in preexisting narratives. Her advocacy involves reassessing masculinist perspectives and recognizing how cultural institutions have influenced idiosyncratic, frequently nonlinear forms of women's learning and expression. Walker's work highlights women who have been erased, ignored, understudied, stigmatized, or censored in the past, to make a more accurate, inclusive, and optimistic account of the evolution of human culture.

In 2018, Walker spoke at Temple University about her own #MeToo experience. As a doctoral student, Walker "seriously considered having sex with a distinguished older male scholar, who, in return, offered [her] the academic equivalents of stardom: publication by prestigious presses, paid speaking engagements, maybe even an appointment at an elite university." William Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (as editor with Pamela Clemit, Broadview Press, 2001); The Idea of Being Free: A Mary Hays Reader (as editor, Broadview Press, 2006). Carefully curated by a foremost scholar on the autodidact writer Mary Hays, Gina Luria Walker sheds light on the lesser-known pieces of Hays's canon. The Idea of Being Free weaves together Hays's letters, nonfiction writing, essays, life writing, and political commentary to emphasize the influence and individual intelligence of a trailblazing historical woman. Chawton House Library Edition of Mary Hays's Female Biography; or Memoirs of Illustrious and Celebrated Women, of All Ages and Countries, 6 vols. (as editor, Pickering & Chatto, 2013, 2014. Published in 2016 by Routledge in the "Memoirs of Women Writers" series). Walker's landmark contemporary edition of Mary Hays's Female Biography chronicles the lives of 302 women across six volumes. To realize this massive undertaking, Walker assembled 164 scholars, establishing the Female Biography Project (FBP) as an international collaborative movement to reconsider and revitalize Hays's pioneering work. The Invention of the Female Biography (With Mary Spongberg, Routledge, 2018); Mary Hays's 'Female Biography': Collective Biography as Enlightenment Feminism (with Mary Spongberg, Routledge, 2019);

Scholarly Contributions

"Sewing in the Next World: Mary Hays as Dissenting Autodidact in the 1780s," Romanticism on the Net, Number 25 (2002) "Mary Hays's 'Love Letters,'" Keats-Shelley Journal Vol. 51 (2002) "'Can Man Be Free/And Woman Be a Slave?' Teaching Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers in Intersecting Communities," Teaching British Women Writers 1750–1900, (2005) "Energetic Sympathies Of Truth And Feeling: Mary Hays And Rational Dissent" in "Intellectual Exchanges: Women and Rational Dissent," a special issue of Enlightenment and Dissent (2011) "Women's Voices," Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the French Revolution in the 1790s (2011) "The Two Marys: Hays Writes Wollstonecraft," Called To Civil Existence (2014, Brill). "The Invention of Female Biography," Enlightenment and Dissent, (2014) "Recovering Frieda Wunderlich: Gender, Knowledge, and Exile." Social Research: An International Quarterly Vol. 84 (with Ellen Freeberg and Lara-Zuzan Golesorkhi, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). "I Sought & Made to Myself an Extraordinary Destiny", Women's Writing, Volume 25, Issue 2 (2018, Routledge) "Female Biography and the Digital Turn," Feminist Histories and Digital Media (Gina Luria Walker, Mary Spongberg, and Koren Whipp, 2019, Routledge) "Women's History: Galvanizing Marginality," The Future of Enlightenment (2019, Hermann).

Interviews and Online Features

"Pride, Prejudice, Patriarchy: Jane Austen reads Mary Hays," Chawton House Library Fellow's Lecture (University of Southampton, 2010) "18 Badass Women You Probably Didn't Hear About in 2014," Buzzfeed (Rossalyn Warren, 2014) "The Two Marys: Hays Writes Wollstonecraft," Romantic Circles (Gina Luria Walker, 2014) "The Sexism of Wikipedia," The Atlantic (Emma Paling, 2015) "Snatching History's Forgotten Women from the Evil Clutches of the Patriarchy," The Atlantic (Emma Paling, 2016) "The New Historia Offers Innovative Ways to Navigate History" (The New School, 2018) "It's 2019. Women Are Still Less Likely To Be Identified By Their Accomplishments," Huffpost (Monica Torres, 2019). "100 Years of Power, Part 2: Slow Burn of Progress," The Story Exchange (Victoria Flexner and Colleen DeBaise, 2020) "Founding Mothers: Meet the Ten Women Who Helped Build The New School," The New School, (2020). "Clara Mayer: An Overlooked Pillar of The New School | Women's Legacy Project" The New School (dir. Cecilia Rubino, 2020) "A Refuge for Scholars: The Women Behind the University in Exile | Women's Legacy Project" The New School (dir. Cecilia Rubino, 2020). "Bernice Abbott: Bringing Photography to The New School | Women's Legacy Project" The New School (dir. Cecilia Rubino, 2020) "Unbound" podcast episode 2 with Gina Luria Walker, January 2021. Women's Legacy at The New School collection, NS-02-25-01. The New School Archives "Taking Up the Cause: Mary Hays's Female Biography," The Women's Print History Project (Amanda Law, 2021). "Where are the Women in Eternity?" Lecture by Gina Luria Walker for Chau Chak Wing Museum/AWAWS, 2021. Volumes 8-10 of Memoirs of Women Writers, Routledge's "History of Feminism" online database. "Interview with Gina Luria Walker and The New Historia," 12th Street Journal, (Riley Dole, 2022)

Reviews in Scholarly Journals

Review of Wendy Gunther-Canada's Rebel Writer: Mary Wollstonecraft and Enlightenment Politics (American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, 2002). Review of E.J. Clery's The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England: Literature, Commerce and Luxury, (Wordsworth Circle Vol. 37 Issue 4, 2006). Reviews of Jennie Batchelor and Cora Kaplan's Women and Material Culture 1660-1830 and Carolyn Steedman's Master and Servant: Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age (Wordsworth Circle Vol. 38 No. 4, 2007). Review of Christina de Bellaigue's Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867, (Journal of British Studies, Oxford University Press, 2009). Review of Julia Prewitt Brown's The Bourgeois Interior: How the Middle Class Imagines Itself in Literature and Film (Wordsworth Circle Vol. 39 Issue 4, 2008). Reviews of Devoney Looser's Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain 1750-1850, Helen Small's The Long Life, and Cheryl A Wilson's Byron: Heritage and Legacy (Wordsworth Circle Vol. 40 Issue 4, 2009). Reviews of Julia V. Douthwaite's The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters from Revolutionary France and Katherine Astbury's Narrative Responses to the Trauma of the French Revolution (European Romantic Review, Vol. 25 Issue 4, 2014).

References to and Reviews of Gina Luria Walker's Work

Elaine Showalter, "Review of The Feminist Controversy in England, 1788-1810" (Signs Vol. 3 No. 4, University of Chicago, 1978). Mary Jeanette Moran, "Review of Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman's Mind" (Journal of British Studies, Vol. 47 Issue 1, 2008). Mary Waters, "Review of Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman's Mind, by G. L. Walker" (Eighteenth-Century Studies, 42(1), 177–179, 2008). "Review of Mary Hays (1759-1843): The Growth of a Woman's Mind, by G. L. Walker" (Women's Writing, Vol. 15 No. 1, 2008). Koren Whipp, "The Female Biography Project" (The Female Spectator Vol. 15 No. 3, 2011). 'Jessica S,' "Review of Rational Passions: Women and Scholarship in Britain 1702-1870: A Reader edited by Felicia Gordon and Gina Luria Walker" (Glasgow Women's Library, 2017). "Visualizing the Feminist Controversy in England, 1788-1810", (DH2018 Mexico City, 2018). Dana A Williams' Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship (Amistad, 2025); ISBN 0063011972. Williams mentions Walker and Tiger's collaboration with Morrison (editor) on the 1976 book Everywoman.