05/19/2021

Katherine A. S. Sibley, Ph.D.

FLARE Member-at-large,

Katherine A. S. Sibley is Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.  She is the editor of both Southern First Ladies: Culture and Place in White House History (2021), as well as A Companion to First Ladies (2016).  She is under contract to write Michelle Obama: First Lady and “Mom-in-Chief” with the University Press of Kansas’s first ladies series; her earlier book in that series, First Lady Florence Harding: Beyond the Tragedy and Controversy, appeared in 2009, and led her to write and perform a musical play on Florence Harding’s life, in 2011. She also appeared on CSPAN’s first ladies series to discuss Harding.  Presently, she is developing a new book series on first ladies (and someday, first partners of all genders) which will explore thematic and interdisciplinary aspects of their roles in the office.  In a different vein, she has just co-edited Post-Cold War Revelations on the American Communist Party: Citizens, Revolutionaries and Spies (2021; her earlier books on Soviet-American relations and U.S. history in general include Red Spies in America: Stolen Secrets and the Dawn of the Cold War (2004), The Cold War (1998), the prize-winning Loans and Legitimacy: The Evolution of Soviet-American Relations, 1919-1933 (1996) and a Companion to Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover (2013).

Sibley received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1991 and is a founding member of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education. For more than a dozen years she was a member of the Historical Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of State and continues to serve on the executive committee of the Historians of American Communism.