Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

For Pulitzer Prize-winning history professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, academic and professional success has come late in the game.

In her first career, Ulrich earned a B.A. in English from the University of Utah in 1960, had five children and served as a faculty wife. In her second career, Ulrich got a master's in English from Simmons College in 1971, switched to history as a teaching assistant at the University of New Hampshire, and received her Ph.D in 1980, specializing in colonial history. And then, following her second book, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812, Ulrich won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991.

Since 1995, Ulrich has taught as a professor at Harvard and has taught a popular course on women's history each year here. One of her classes, formerly offered as an introductory course in Women's Studies, "Women, Feminism, and History," was offered as a Core class for the first time this year.

"[The size] was a little overwhelming," says Ulrich, who is Phillips professor of history and director of the Charles Warren Center for American History. "The main difference for me is I feel more distant from the students. It was more like a performance."

Ruth K. O'Meara-Costello '02, a student in "Women, Feminism, and History" this year, praises Ulrich's teaching.

"Her lectures were great...Ulrich was so consistently positive and hopeful," O'Meara-Costello writes in an e-mail message. "She's very humorous and easy to listen to but she also covers a lot and draws a lot of interesting connections."

Ulrich says her course has several aims. Through Historical Studies A-33, she wants to get students excited about history, which she says is about "how human beings have made change happen," not about "old dead things." Ulrich also wants to give visibility to people who don't get a lot of attention, so that the course is not just about middle-class white women but is about many kinds of women and many kinds of feminism.

"History is not something with black and white answers," Ulrich says. "You might know something that happened, but there might be multiple explanations for why it happened."

Ulrich calls herself an "evangelist for history."

"I really do love history," she says. "Everything has a history...everything from the chair you're sitting on to the book you're reading has a grounding in past life."

Part of that love of history comes from Ulrich's childhood in rural Sugar City, Idaho, a 900-person community where Ulrich learned how to kill chickens and milk cows. Ulrich says she heard a lot of pioneer stories, as her grandparents were homesteaders in the late 19th century.

"Somehow in that little town...I grew up with a lot of curiosity and interest in the past," she says.

Ulrich, who considers herself a feminist, says her life was significantly changed by the women's movement of the 1960s and the 1970s.

"History, I think, changed my life in a very real way."

It changed her life so much, in fact, that Ulrich spent eight years researching and writing the story of Martha Ballard, a Maine midwife who wrote of the 810 births she delivered in a 27-year "18th-century datebook." Much of the diary was dry and hard to understand at first, Ulrich says, but eventually she began to learn Ballard's voice.

"You have to discern how she felt about things by understanding the patterns of her language," Ulrich says.

For the 1990 book, Ulrich won several awards, including the Pulitzer. Ulrich says she was in "total shock" when she heard she had won the award.

"It's something [empowering women] I'd love to have a part in," says Ulrich of the subject she teaches and seems to have taken a role in as a leader among Harvard's faculty members.

"It's a really exciting time for both men and women at Harvard," says Ulrich, who adds that it's often thought women are "partaking" of Harvard's great tradition.

"There has to be give and take," she says.

Ulrich, who serves on the Committee on the Status of Women at Harvard, respects the work of the Coalition.

"I do think there has to be some really serious attention given to what they're asking for," particularly with the merger, she says. "I think there are still women students who feel marginalized sometimes."

And for Ulrich's future? A third book is on the way, and the professor says she wants to do more undergraduate teaching.

"I really enjoy the students," Ulrich says.