Kathy Peiss is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History at Penn, where she teaches courses on modern American cultural history and the history of American sexuality, women, and gender.  Her research has examined the history of working women; working-class and interracial sexuality; leisure, style, and popular culture; the beauty industry in the U.S. and abroad; and libraries, information, and American cultural policy during World War II.  She is particularly interested in the ways that culture shapes the everyday lives and popular beliefs of Americans across time.  Peiss is the author of Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (1986); Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (1998); Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (2011), and Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers, and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe (2019), as well as numerous edited volumes and journal articles.