#  Caroline Light 

Director of Undergraduate Studies

Senior Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

 

 

 



   ![caroline light leaning against a wall](/sites/g/files/omnuum8271/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-07/CL%20headshot%202025.jpg?h=c0cb035a&itok=I5V45Ftl) 

 



 

 location\_on Boylston Hall5 Harvard YardCambridge, MA 02138 

 smartphone [617-495-1964](tel:617-495-1964) 

 email <clight@fas.harvard.edu> 

 laptop\_windows [Caroline Light's website](https://scholar.harvard.edu/carolinelight) 

 laptop\_windows [Office Hours](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/carolinelight) 

 

 



 

Caroline Light is a Senior Lecturer and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in WGS. Her research explores histories of citizenship and belonging in the United States, including how Jewish immigrants created a web of benevolent organizations in the South. Light's first book, [That Pride of Race and Character: the Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South](https://nyupress.org/books/9781479854530/) (NYU Press, 2014) tells the stories of Jewish orphans raised in institutions that lifted them from poverty to prosperity. [Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense](http://www.beacon.org/Stand-Your-Ground-P1254.aspx) (Beacon Press, 2017) tracks the evolution of our nation’s ideals of armed citizenship, from the centuries-old “castle doctrine” to the “Stand Your Ground” laws that have removed the duty to retreat in a majority of the states. A ten-year anniversary edition of *Stand Your Ground* - with a Preface by historian [Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz](https://law.utexas.edu/humanrights/directory/roxanne-dunbar-ortiz/) - is forthcoming.

##### Courses Taught in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality

*GENED 1073 Guns in the U.S.: A Love Story*

*WOMGEN 96-ABL Off the Page and Into the World: Feminist Praxis in the Community*

*WOMGEN 97 Sophomore Tutorial*

*WOMGEN 98 Junior Tutorial*

*WOMGEN 1200 Feminism in Historical Contexts*

*WOMGEN 1238 Consuming Passions*

*WOMGEN 1283 Love's Labors Found: Uncovering Histories of Emotional Labor*

*WOMGEN 1424 American Fetish: Consumer Culture Encounters the Other*

*WOMGEN 2040 The Secret Sex Life of Anthropological Objects*

*US-WORLD 26 Sex and the Citizen: Race, Gender, and Belonging in the United States*



 

 

 





 

 

- ## People Terms
    
     [Faculty](/people-terms/faculty) [Standing Committee](/people-terms/standing-committee)
- ## Specialty
    
     [American Studies](/specialty/american-studies) [Ethnicity, Migration, Rights](/specialty/ethnicity-migration-rights) [History](/specialty/history)