Pamela Haag

Pamela Haag

Essayist

Pamela Haag’s work spans a wide, and unusual, spectrum, all the way from academic scholarship to memoir. Thematically, it has consistently focused on women's issues, feminism, and American culture, but she’s also written on topics as eclectic as the effort to rebuild the lower Manhattan subway lines after 9/11, 24-hour sports radio talk shows, and the experience of class mobility.

Haag earned a Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 1995, after graduating with Highest Honors from Swarthmore College. She’s held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and post-doctoral fellowships at both Brown and Rutgers University. As an academic she published scholarly articles and a first book, based on dissertation work, with Cornell University Press in 1999.

She became the Director of Research for the AAUW Educational Foundation, a nationalnonprofit based in Washington, DC, that advocates for girls and women. In that capacity she wrote and edited several pieces of research and was the media spokesperson for the research.
In 2002, Haag became a speechwriter on issues of public transit and transit-oriented development for the secretary of the Federal Transit Administration and, occasionally, the Secretary of Transportation.

Since 2004, she has been publishing personal and opinion essays in a variety of venues, including National Public Radio, the American Scholar, the Christian Science Monitor, Ms. magazine, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Michigan Quarterly Review, New Haven Review, the Antioch Review and carte blanche. Haag earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College in 2008, where she won the Chris White award for best essay, and was also a prizewinner in the Atlantic’s 2008 national nonfiction contest.

Haag's latest book, Marriage Confidential: The Post-Romantic Age of Workhorse Wives, Royal Children, Undersexed Spouses, and Rebel Couples Who Are Rewriting the Rules, released by HarperCollins in May of 2011, draws on all of these strands of Haag’s unique professional biography to create almost a new genre, a weave of academic expertise, cultural history, creativenonfiction, memoir, storytelling, interviews, and commentary.

A “male birth control pill” is now one step closer to technological plausibility—but not much more socially plausible than it was last week. It’s an inconceivable technology, to indulge the […]
This month a few newspapers and online surveys found that Americans cared more about the Olympics, and sports, than the 2012 presidential election. This type of finding tends to get […]
Author and Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown died yesterday at the lovely age of 90, after having been declared a “living landmark” in New York. In her honor I dusted […]
I was flipping through a beach coupon book, and came across this ad:  “Ladies are you looking for an exciting Girls Night Out?” The business hosts all-female parties that “teach […]
Female Olympians are rightly angry that their bodies have been criticized in petty ways. The Brazilian soccer team was called “a bit chubby,” and weightlifters have been called “fat” and […]
You might have had an experience like this: You’re cruising down the highway, with nothing in particular on your mind, when, suddenly, you let out an audible groan, remembering one […]
When I go to my favorite political websites these days I have to see “Chick Fil A” as one of the hot topics. The CEO’s against same-sex marriage, but he’s […]
“Are You Married?” is supposed to be a YES/NO question, and not a short essay format. Still, in the exam blue book of life, some might prefer to give a […]
“Mommy” has become an adjective. This is both perplexing and troubling. I’m so sick of hearing everything get modified with mommy. Shades of Gray is “mommy porn.” Slow-track, less-stressful jobs […]
Elle Zober’s husband left her for a 22-year old “yoga girl,” and Elle didn’t take it with a whimper. Instead she channeled her heartache and disappointment into crafting what has […]
I was thinking of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is now trying for a political comeback, while driving home from New Haven, listening to a blues hour out of a […]
I got my first “smart” phone last week—the iPhone 4S—and I guess it’s already obsolete, since rumors of the iPhone 5 are flying. My smartphone and its mysterious resident genius, […]
ITEM 1: When you think “female judges,” what or who comes to mind? Sandra Day O’Connor? Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor? Hell, even the network television shows “Judging Amy” or “Judge […]
The new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayeris pregnant, and not planning on taking maternity leave. This has stirred renewed conversation about “having it all,” and women’s lives. I’ve written before in […]
The extramarital alliance has an interesting history of its own.  It’s not all clichés from John Updike and Gay Talese. Here’s a snapshot of how various moments in history might […]
We’re a fat nation for the simple reason that we hate bodies.
The demographic of “Ph.D.-holding, football fiend women who listen to their local call-in sports shows” is probably small. So I wasn’t the intended audience for theDr. Pepper 10 commercial that […]
Our power was out all weekend, along with that of millions of other electricity refugees.  Our city’s patience and civility were fraying. Cannibalism loomed just around the corner, so my […]
In slang, the “cheating band” used to mean that conspicuous band of paler skin revealed when a would-be cheater took off their wedding band to fool and seduce a new […]
New research out of Cambridge University in the U.K. finds that husbands who do households chores are happier and experience greater wellbeing. This finding surprised the researchers, who hypothesized that […]