Molly M. Brookfield is a writer, researcher, and public historian. In her writing and teaching, she covers numerous subjects related to gender, sexuality, and urban life in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, but takes particular interest in examining how notions of masculinity have changed over time.
Brookfield’s work has appeared in academic journals, public history blogs, and podcasts. She has developed exhibits and delivered educational programs for museums, archives, and historic sites across the U.S. and U.K. As an educator, Brookfield has taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and on the faculty at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
Brookfield earned her PhD in the joint program in History and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. She also holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies from University College London and a BA in History from Macalester College.
Brookfield’s monograph, Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States (University of North Carolina Press 2026) is the first book-length history of the phenomenon we know today as street harassment. Spanning more than a century, from the 1860s to the 1980s, Brookfield’s research reveals how street harassment became normalized as part of urban life and restricted women’s freedom of movement through the city.
Order Watching the Girls Go By now.
Short Bio (58 words)
Molly M. Brookfield is a writer, researcher, and public historian whose work examines gender, sexuality, and urban life in the United States. Her book, Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States (UNC Press, 2026), charts the normalization of men’s harassment of women in public space across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
