Feminist historian Ellen DuBois’s explorations of the history of feminism offered Second Wave feminists ways to talk about women’s sexuality beyond exploitation and banning pornography. DuBois received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in 1968 and her PhD from Northwestern University in 1975. She taught at SUNY Buffalo from 1972 to 1988 and at UCLA from 1988 until her retirement in 2017. At a time when feminists were trying to find ways to talk about sexuality that went beyond birth control and rape prevention, DuBois coauthored a paper for the 1982 Barnard feminism and scholarship conference called “Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure in 19th-Century Feminist Sexual Thought.” The paper detailed the efforts of earlier feminists to champion sexual pleasure for women and challenged the belief that early feminism had only focused on protecting women from sexual threats. DuBois’s work focuses on the history of the women’s suffrage movement and global struggles for women’s rights. She is the author of many books and articles, including Unequal Sisters: A Reader in Multicultural US Women’s History (first edition 1990) and Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents (first edition 2005). Suffrage: Women’s Battle for the Vote was released in 2020.