Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a historian of contemporary American politics and culture. She is the author of Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession(University of Chicago Press, 2023), which is currently in development as a documentary. She is a columnist for MSNBC Opinion, a frequent media guest expert, public speaker, and contributor to outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the New Republic, the Atlantic, and the History Channel. A former teacher, Petrzela is currently the lead scholar on the New York City Department of Education’s Jewish American Hidden Voices curriculum, launching June 2025. She is coproducer and host of the podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy, from Pineapple Street Studios/Gimlet, cohost of the Past Present podcast, and is developing a new podcast for the BBC.
Petrzela is the cofounder of the wellness education program Healthclass2.0. Her work has been supported by the Spencer, Whiting, Rockefeller, and Mellon foundations. She holds a BA from Columbia University and a PhD from Stanford University and lives with her husband and two children in New York City.
Her project, “A Thinking American’s Guide to the Classroom Culture Wars,” considers that schoolhouse issues are so contentious because they stand in for our grandest ambitions and deepest anxieties about our children and the world — yet offer tangible targets on which to train these inchoate, and often overwhelming, emotions: a textbook revision, a social studies curriculum, a reading primer, a dress code, a yoga module. “A Thinking American’s Guide to the School Culture Wars” will explain why bitter conflict over how we educate children has proved as enduring as the school system itself, and in marshaling the past, will offer educators, parents, and students fresh insights on how we arrived at the present — and how to shape our future.
May 2024
