Oakland University Anthropology Professor and Director of Women's Studies Suzanne Spencer-Wood recently was appointed a research associate position at Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.

The year-long appointment was granted to Spencer-Wood for her cutting-edge research in feminist historical archaeology. She pioneered feminist publications and organized the first two conference symposia in feminist historical archaeology, which were followed by the development of this field research.

Research in the Harvard Archives is required for Spencer-Wood's forthcoming publication on the first pay-for-housework movement, called the Cambridge Cooperative Housekeeping Society, which was organized by Harvard faculty wives. Starting in 1868, Melusina Fay Pierce organized a laundry, a bakery and a store as cooperative housekeeping businesses to replace the repetition of arduous household chores in individual homes and to obtain high quality groceries.

Spencer-Wood's research is concerned with the socio-cultural processes involved in creating the cooperative housekeeping movement. She also is researching the reasons for the failure of the Cambridge Cooperative Housekeeping Society, including obstructive interference by the organizers' husbands (mostly Harvard faculty), as well as the material expressions of the dominant gender ideology. Research for other publications that are supported by Spencer-Wood's associate position at the Peabody Museum include applications of feminist theory to gender historical archaeological research on utopian communities, industrial sites, social reform sites and cultural landscapes such as playgrounds and parks.