Joan Underhill Hannon

Joan Underhill Hannon joined the Berkeley Economics department in 1977, upon completion of her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Raised in Long Beach, CA and a graduate of UC Santa Cruz, Hannon is an economic historian whose research focuses on 19th century U.S. immigration and poverty. At Berkeley, Hannon taught graduate and undergraduate courses in economic history. Hannon was denied tenure in 1985. She subsequently moved to and was tenured at St. Mary’s College of California in nearby Moraga, from where she retired in the 2010s. Hannon’s experience and ultimate departure from Berkeley  is an important part of the fabric of women faculty’s experience.

Hannon’s politics and intellectual lens always put her more in what is now termed the “heterodox” camp of economics, and what was in the 1970s and 1980s termed the “Marxist” or “leftist” camp.  Read more . . .