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Margaret Marsh is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School at Rutgers--Camden and a Professor of History.

She was previously a professor of History at Temple University, where she developed the Ph.D. program in Women’s History and served as Chair of the History Department. She is the author of numerous articles, in journals including the American Quarterly, the Journal of American History, Pennsylvania History, and of chapters in books on topics ranging from the history of motherhood to the history of masculinity. She has written three books: Anarchist Women (1981), Suburban Lives (1990), and The Empty Cradle: Infertility in America from Colonial Times to the Present (1996/paperback 1999), a collaboration with her sister Wanda Ronner, a gynecologist.

The Empty Cradle marked a turning point in her scholarly interests and led directly to her current research project, a medical and cultural biography of John Rock, perhaps the most important figure in the practice of reproductive medicine in the second third of the twentieth century. Principally remembered today as one of the developers and the chief publicist of the oral contraceptive, Rock had in fact enjoyed a distinguished career even before he became known as a "father of the Pill." In the course of a professional life spanning more than half a century -- he graduated from medical school in 1918 and retired in 1972 -- John Rock was a pivotal figure in many of the most important questions of the age having to do with sexuality and reproduction. Dr. Ronner is also collaborating in this work.

Dean Marsh is the recipient of two major multi-year research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities – the first for The Empty Cradle from 1990-1994, and the second, from 1999 to 2004, for her current work. She has been a History Fellow at the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. In 1996 she received Temple University’s Paul W. Eberman Faculty Research Prize for excellence in scholarly contributions, and The Empty Cradle was named an Outstanding Academic Book by Choice Magazine.

Her record of service to her profession and the community has included serving on the Richard Stockton Foundation from 1977-1981 (as Vice-President); the New Jersey Humanities Council (1983-1990); the College Outcomes Evaluation Committee of the New Jersey Department of Higher Education (1986-1988); the Board of Directors of the Urban History Association (1994 -1997; and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (Selection Committee for History Fellows, 1990 - present). She was a Liaison Officer for the Faculty Resources Network for the Ford Foundation and New York University in 1984 and 1985 and has chaired several prize committees and nominating committees for various professional organizations. She currently chairs the Finance Committee of the American Association for the History of Medicine. In recent years she has served as a consultant for the film, Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman, and has appeared on the Discovery Health Channel and in the American Experience documentary on the birth-control pill for PBS.

Office Address: Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ 08102
Phone: (856) 225-6097
Fax: (856) 225-6603
E-mail: mmarsh@camden.rutgers.edu