Rebecca Sheehan was born in Sydney, Australia. She received an M.A. in history from USC and a B.A. from the University of New South Wales with first-class honors in history and a major in literature and linguistics. She spent a year as a Fulbright scholar at UCLA before entering the Ph.D program at USC in 2003 where she works with George Sanchez, Alice Echols, and Diane Winston. Her dissertation on sexuality in the United States reframes the notion that the 1970s marked a period of straightforward sexual liberation. The dissertation argues that, during the 1970s, the interplay between three powerful cultural forces—pornography, rock music, and evangelical religion—led to the formation of a new sexual order that merged sexual liberalization with traditional Christian morality and re-established a sexual double standard.
Rebecca’s research and teaching interests include 19th and 20th century US history, women’s history, gender and sexuality, alternative history-writing, cultural studies, media history, and transnational history. She served on the Executive Council of the American Studies Association (2005-2006), was a graduate fellow of the Center for Law, Humanities, and Culture at USC (2006), and she received a USC University Outstanding Teaching award in 2006. |
