At their last meeting, the university's Board of Visitors approved the nomination of Rosemarie Zagarri, of the Department of History and Art History, as a new University Professor.
University professors are among Mason’s distinguished faculty, a group that also includes endowed chairs, Clarence J. Robinson Professors, Distinguished Professors, and Distinguished Service Professors. They are chosen periodically to acknowledge a faculty member “who has gone above and beyond and who should be recognized,” explained Deborah Boehm-Davis, assistant dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Zagarri’s areas of research interest include early American history (colonial – 1820), early American women, and 18th century transatlantic history. She has been at George Mason University since 1997, and brought experience teaching at The Catholic University of America, West Virginia University, and the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where she was appointed the Jefferson Chair in American Studies by the Fulbright Commission. She has published four books, most recently Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press 2007; paperback, 2008), and has written many articles, published in the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, and The William & Mary Quarterly, as well as a number of edited collections.
Zagarri has received research fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Antiquarian Society, and the American Philosophical Society, to name a few. In 1992, she received the Outstanding Article Prize, awarded by the Southeastern Eighteenth-Century Studies Association, for “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother.” In 2009, she was elected President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). In 2011, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences honored her with the annual Award for Scholarship, and the Organization of American Historians appointed her Distinguished Lecturer. She has served on the editorial boards of American Quarterly, the Journal of the Early Republic, and the University of Virginia Press, and was a member of the Council of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture from 2006-2009.
Jack Censer, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, was pleased with the announcement: "Rosemarie Zagarri has emerged as one of the top early American historians of her generation. She has been president of the Society for the History of the Early Republic. She also has written a number of books, covering a wide range from biography to the role of gender."
Brian Platt, chair, Department of History and Art History, agreed that the honor is well deserved.
"If I had to choose a model scholar for a young historian to emulate, it would be Dr. Zagarri,” he said. “And not just in terms of her work habits, which are admirable. She is a dogged archival researcher but doesn't get lost in the weeds. She engages thoughtfully with big arguments in the field but never gets untethered from evidence or historical context. She's an amazingly clear and purposeful thinker. She has built up an impressive record of scholarship during her career, and is deserving of all the accolades she has received."
February 27, 2013