Member Preview for Free to Be . . . You and Me: 50 Years of Stories and Songs

Margi Hofer is an independent curator specializing in American material culture. As museum director of the New-York Historical Society from 2015 to 2023, she guided a dynamic exhibitions program. As the Historical Society’s curator of decorative arts for more than two decades, she organized dozens of exhibitions on topics ranging from Tiffany lamps to Black dolls. Margi was recently appointed executive director of the Coby Foundation, which supports museum projects related to textiles and the needle arts.

Laura Lovett works as a Professor of History and Director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Her first book, Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction and the Family in the United States, critically examined pronatalist policies in the US from irrigation to housing policies in its examination of Gender and Eugenics. Her second book, co-edited with Lori Rotskoff, When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made was the first critical examination of one of the most important texts of the US Women’s Movement.

Lori Rotskoff is a cultural historian, writer, and educator. For over two decades, she has taught classes for lifelong learners at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, the 92NY, Scarsdale Adult School, and elsewhere. She is co-editor of When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made (2012) and author of Love on the Rocks: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Post-World War II America (2002). Her articles and book reviews have appeared in many publications including the Women’s Review of Books and the Journal of American History. She serves on the Board of Directors of LEAP, a non-profit that provides arts education programs for underserved NYC public school students; and the Jewish Women’s Archive, a digital resource for oral histories, public programs, and activism.