Abigail Modaff
Honors College Faculty
Email: amodaff@central.uh.edu
CV
Abigail Modaff is an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Honors College, where she teaches American History after 1877. She earned her doctorate from Harvard University in 2021, her master’s from Cambridge University in 2013, and her bachelor’s from Harvard in 2012. Her dissertation, “’To Meet Life Face to Face’: Communication and American Social Reform from Haymarket to the Harlem Renaissance,” won the 2022 Leo P. Ribuffo Prize for Best Dissertation in American Intellectual History. Before coming to the University of Houston, she taught in the Social Studies program and the History department at Harvard University, where she was the recipient of numerous teaching awards. Her current book project, The Ladies’ Pioneer Society: A History of Women and Ideas in America, tells the story of women reading together through one extraordinary book club. The Ladies’ Pioneer Society is under contract with Simon and Schuster.