Earlham College | A national liberal arts college in the Midwest
Ryan Murphy
Associate Professor of History and Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies

Ryan Murphy teaches labor history, history of sexuality, urban history, and intellectual history. He is the author of Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism, Family Politics, and Workplace Justice, which received the 2017 David Montgomery award for best book in labor history from the Organization of American Historians. He is currently at work on a new project, Teamsters Metropolis: An Intimate Geography of the Labor Movement in the Mid-Twentieth Century, which explores union activists’ fraught relationship to kinship, family, and desire in the neighborhoods of 1950s U.S. cities.

"I teach at Earlham because of its commitment to intellectual freedom," says Ryan. "Professors are encouraged to work across the boundaries of conventional disciplines, and to continually expand their areas of expertise. At Earlham, creativity is not only valued, but required."

Contact Info

Campus Mail
Drawer 102

Phone
765-983-1201

E-mail

Office
Landrum Bolling Center

Office Hours
T,W,R — 10 a.m. - Noon

Programs/Departments

  • History
  • Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies
  • Peace & Global Studies

Degrees

  • Ph.D., University of Minnesota at Minneapolis
  • B.A., Macalester College

Selected Courses:

Workplace Justice: Readings in U.S. Labor History
Dissident Sexualities in U.S. History
Philosophy of History
Introduction to U.S. History since 1865

Ryan Murphy's curriculum vitae

Books

Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism, Family Politics, and Workplace Justice (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016).

Teamsters Metropolis: An Intimate Geography of the Labor Movement in the Mid-Twentieth Century (Manuscript in progress).

Edited Volumes

Co-editor, with the Twin Cities GLBT Oral History Project – Michael David Franklin, Lawrence Knopp, Kevin P. Murphy, Jennifer L. Pierce, Jason Ruiz, and Alex T. Urquhart, Queer Twin Cities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010).   

Recent Articles

“Keyword: Work,” Routledge History of American Sexuality, ed. Kevin P. Murphy, Jason Ruiz, and David Serlin (New York: Routledge, Forthcoming December 2019).

“Lifestyle: Dissident Sexualities, U.S. Urban History, and the Genealogy of a Contested Category,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 26.2 (April 2020) Forthcoming.

“The Political Economy of Care: Flight Attendant Unions, Airline Deregulation, and the ‘Pro-Work’ Politics of the 1980s.” Anthropology of Work Review 38.1 (July 2017) 18-27.

American Studies Association

I teach at Earlham because of its commitment to intellectual freedom. Professors are encouraged to work across the boundaries of conventional disciplines, and to continually expand their areas of expertise. At Earlham, creativity is not only valued, but required.

Earlham students are intellectually adventurous. I am always impressed that students with little prior training in U.S. History or in Sexuality Studies, for example, takes an advanced class and does original scholarly research in those areas. I also regularly have students who are not in my classes but who seek out my expertise for project in other fields. That collaboration is standard practice at Earlham, which in turn makes me a better scholar.

I founded a queer arts and cultural center in Minneapolis during my time as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Making queer culture is even more important to me than studying it, and thus I have been involved in the queer scene in both Minneapolis and my previous home town of San Francisco.

 

 

I was a flight attendant before I became an academic. I still collect airline memorabilia from the 1950-1970, and especially that from vanished airlines like Braniff, TWA, and Pan Am. I ride my bike everywhere. I love old Volvos. Despite my Irish name, I am a committed Southern Italian cook.

Earlham College, an independent, residential college, aspires to provide the highest-quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences, shaped by the distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

Translate Our Site
Earlham College
801 National Road West
Richmond, Indiana
47374-4095
1-765-983-1200 — Main Switchboard
1-800-EARLHAM (327-5426) — Admission


NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY AS TO STUDENTS

Earlham admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin, age, gender and sexual orientation to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin, age, gender and sexual orientation in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.