Caitlin Wiesner

Caitlin Wiesner is an Assistant Professor of History and History Program Director at Mercy University’s School of Liberal Arts. Her research focuses on gender violence, feminist activism, African American women, and state crime control policy in 20th-century America. She holds the William F. Olson Chair in Civic and Cultural Studies for 2023–2024. Wiesner teaches courses on U.S. and African American history, the history of race/gender/sexuality, and historical research methods. She earned her PhD from Rutgers University (2021) and a BA with Distinguished Honors from The College of New Jersey (2015).

Her current book project, Between the Street and the State: Black Women’s Anti-Rape Activism Amid the War on Crime (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), examines Black anti-rape activists’ engagement with feminist movements and federal crime policies from 1974–1994. Her work has been supported by grants including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant (with Maureen MacLeod) and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation and Rutgers University.

Wiesner’s scholarship appears in journals like Modern American History and Journal of Women’s History, as well as edited volumes such as Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History. She also contributed a review of Aya Gruber’s The Feminist War on Crime to Feminist Formations.