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.

I don’t write fiction, at all. I can’t make stuff up. But I used to read more fiction than I do now. And occasionally I wonder why I’ve struggled to […]
Any day now, the Supreme Court will release its ruling on the individual mandate in President Obama’s healthcare reform. It will inspire pontification about how far the government can “interfere” […]
A childfree friend of mine once memorably wondered why moms are so “judge-y” toward each other. I’m loath to reinforce the rhetorical overkill of calling this judge-y state the “mommy […]
Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate, with KRC research, is releasing an interesting report this week on “Civility in America 2012.”   Sixty-three percent “believe we have a major civility problem […]
I’d like to get the Freakonomics guys to explain this paradox of K-12 education:  The more money you spend for your children’s education, the fewer days they’ll actually be educated. […]
New research in The Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science finds that people who shop at organic food stores are more inclined to be judgmental. Organic foods “reduce prosocial […]
Silicon Valley’s wage gap and income inequality between men and women must surely rank among the worst in the country.
I’ve always suspected, to paraphrase an adage from evolutionary science, that the marriage replicates the wedding. The wedding’s style is a germinal expression of the marriage to come, its strengths, […]
A friend recently asked me: why has public opinion on same-sex marriage “evolved,” in Obama’s coinage, while public opinion on abortion grinds itself deeper into a rut? It’s an interesting […]
Here are hypotheses 10 through 18 on how social media might change your love life. Click here for Part 1… ASSORTATIVE MATING ON STEROIDS Like marries like today. “Assortative mating” […]
So, I guess Facebook is here to stay.  In honor of its over-subscribed IPO, I’m brainstorming about how social media might be existentially changing our romantic lives and intimacy. Here’s […]
What could be better than starting your morning, visiting your online haunts, and being confronted, bleary-eyed, with a picture of a blonde woman in a catsuit having her breast suckled […]
What do you get for being a governor who cuts $860 million from his state’s education budget and forces schools to slash their arts education?  A Lifetime Achievement Award for […]
In November of 1977, Houston hosted a national women’s conference to hammer out a broad agenda against sexual inequality. It was hailed as the most diverse American political gathering in […]
Warning: Don’t read this if your funny bone’s in traction, or if your tongue can’t be planted firmly in cheek… On a talk show I heard an ex-agent describe the […]
“Plan Now. Relax Soon.”   The Concierge of a fancy resort has sent me this “Quick! Relax, Goddamnit!” email.  My husband and I are looking forward to attending a wedding […]
In 2003, a man broke into Vonette W.’s house in the middle of the night, wearing a scarf to cover his face. He held a gun to her head and […]
Pamela Haag: "Whenever I hear a headline like 'Marriage Ruined by Cheating,' I’m tempted to point to a divorce somewhere else and declare, 'Marriage Ruined by Monogamy.'
It looks like a new front in the “war on women” has opened up, and it involves America’s nuns. A friend of mine who belongs to a women-led Catholic community […]
Pew research released yesterday finds a “gender reversal” in career aspirations. Sixty-six percent (66%) of womenbetween the ages of 18 and 34 now rate a “high-paying career” as one of […]