The Marjorie Lansing Papers document the personal, professional, and political activities of Marjorie Lansing (1916-1998), who was an Eastern Michigan University Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan alumna, and feminist political activist. The collection contains material from 1937 to 1998, with a concentration from 1967 to 1993. It provides insights into her career, political viewpoints, research agenda, and others' perceptions of her.
Marjorie Lansing was known for her research on the "gender gap" in voting behavior, political activism, and enthusiastic teaching style in political science. She was born on April 2, 1916 in Geneva, Florida. She received a bachelor's degree from the Florida State College for Women in 1937 and a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1941. Between 1941 and 1945, she worked in Washington D.C. as a research investigator. She married John Lansing in 1945 and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he finished his Ph.D. at Harvard. In 1949, they moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he was a professor of economics at the University of Michigan from 1949 to 1970 and program director of the Institute for Social Research. In this time, Marjorie Lansing raised three children and volunteered actively for the Democratic Party in Washtenaw County. She was elected as delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1960 and 1976. She served as president of the Ann Arbor Democratic Women's Club for two years, chaired the Ann Arbor Township Democratic Committee for five years, and was precinct delegate to county and state conventions for twelve years.
Lansing began graduate study at the University of Michigan in political science in 1961 and received her Ph.D. in 1970. She was hired as a part-time lecturer at Eastern Michigan University in 1965, was promoted to full-time in 1968, and became a full professor in 1977. Throughout her career, she expanded her dissertation topic about women's political behavior and status into books, numerous articles, and conference papers. She co-authored her two most important works with Sandra Baxter: Women and Politics: The Invisible Majority in 1980 and Women and Politics: The Visible Majority in 1983. Amidst teaching and research, she ran for the University of Michigan Board of Regents in 1972 and 1984 and for Congress in 1974. She also remained active in local political associations and research communities for women's studies and political science. For example, she served as president of the Women's Caucus of the Midwest Political Science Association in 1982-1983. She was selected as a member of the Executive Committee of the Michigan Women Studies Association in 1985. She also was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Third Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in 1987. In 1986, she retired from Eastern Michigan University, but later accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Southern California in 1990-1991. She died in 1998.
