Nancy Beck Young is the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History at the University of Houston and Director of the Center for Public History. She is a political historian and biographer interested in gender, policy, elections, and the state. She is co-director of Sharing Stories from 1977, a digital humanities project rooted in public history methodologies that tells the story of the almost 2,000 women who gathered in Houston in November 1977 for the National Women’s Conference.
She has won multiple grants and fellowships, including an NEH Collaborative Research Grant, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship, and a Clements Fellowship in Southwest Studies. Teaching and research awards include the Provost’s UH Teaching Excellence Community Engagement Award; CLASS Distinguished Faculty Award; Guittard Book Prize; D.B. Hardeman Prize for the Best Book on Congress; Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Illinois Professor of the Year; and Ima Hogg Historical Achievement Award for Outstanding Research on Texas History.
She has authored five books: Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism (2019); Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II (2013); Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady (2004); Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, and the American Dream (2000); and Texas, Her Texas: The Life and Times of Frances Goff (co-authored with Lewis L. Gould, 1997). She is co-author of Texas: Crossroads of North America, 2nd edition, with Jesús F. de la Teja and Ron Tyler (2015).
She is currently working on two book projects: a biography of John Nance Garner and a book about the idea of the first lady.
