Rosemarie Zagarri
University Professor
Early American history (colonial-1820); Early American women; 18th-century transatlantic history
Rosemarie Zagarri received her Ph.D. from Yale University and specializes in Early American history. She has published four books, the most recent of which is Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007; paperback, 2008). Her articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, and The William & Mary Quarterly, and in numerous edited collections.
Professor Zagarri has received research fellowships from organizations including the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997-1998, 2011-2012), the American Antiquarian Society, and the American Philosophical Society. In 1992, she received the Outstanding Article Prize, awarded by the Southeastern Eighteenth-Century Studies Association, for “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother.” In Spring 1993, the Fulbright Commission appointed her to the Thomas Jefferson Chair in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 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. In 2009, she was elected President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). In 2011, she received the Scholarship Award from GMU's College of Humanities and Social Sciences and was also appointed Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians.
Current Research
Zagarri’s current book project is called, “A Tale of Two Empires: Thomas Law, British India, and the Early American Republic.”
Selected Publications
Books:
Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007; paperback, 2008).
A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan-Davidson, Inc., 1995).
David Humphrey’ ‘Life of General Washington’ with George Washington’s ‘Remarks’ (edited, with an introduction) (Athens, Ga.: The University of Georgia Press, 1991; paperback, 2006).
The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776 - 1850 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1987; paperback, 2010).
Selected Articles:
“The Family Factor: Congressmen and the Burden of Public Service in the Early American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic (accepted, forthcoming Summer 2013)
“Scholarship on the American Revolution since The Birth of the Republic,” appendix to Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 193-209.
“George Washington and the Emergence of Party Politics in the New Nation,” Blackwell Companion to George Washington, ed. Edward G. Lengel (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 492-505.
“The Significance of the ‘Global Turn’ for the Early American Republic: Globalization in the Age of Nation-Building,” Journal of the Early Republic 31(Spring 2011), 1-37.
“Mercy Otis Warren on Church and State,” in The Forgotten Founders on Religion and Public Life, ed. Daniel Driesbach, Mark David Hall, and Jeffry Morrison (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 278-303.
“Women and Party Conflict,” in Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, ed. Jeffrey Pasley, Andrew Robertson, and David Waldstreicher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 107-28.
“The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. ser., 60 (April 1998), 200-227.
“Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother,” American Quarterly 44 (June 1992), 192-215.
“Representation and the Removal of State Capitals, 1776 - 1812,” Journal of American History 74 (March 1988), 1239-1256.
Courses Taught
HIST 300: Historical Methods for Revolutionary America
HIST 389: Founding Mothers and Fathers
HIST 401: Colonial Origins of American Society
HIST 403: Era of the American Revolution
HIST 499: Research Seminar on Revolutionary America
Graduate:
HIST 615: The Transatlantic Enlightenment in America
HIST 615: Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Revolutions
HIST 620: Development of the Early Republic
HIST 631: The American Revolution
HIST 711: Research Seminar on Early American History
HIST 811: Doctoral Research Seminar
Honors:
Honors 120: Conceptions of Self
Dissertations Supervised:
Stephanie R. Hurter—GMU (2010)—“‘Pressing their Voices’: The People, the Press, and the Growth of Participatory Politics in the State Ratifying Conventions for the U.S. Constitution, 1787-1788”
Roger P. Mellen—GMU (2007)—“A Culture of dissidence: The Emergence of Liberty of the Press in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia”
Patricia Riley Dunlap—GMU/DACCE program (1999)—“Constructing the Republican Woman: American Periodical Response to the Women of the French Revolution, 1789-1844”
Tricia T. Pyne—Catholic University of America (1995)—“The Maryland Catholic Community, 1690-1775: A Study in Culture, Region, and Church”
Krystyna Puc—George Washington University (1994) —“Leaving England Behind: The Experience of Women in Northampton County, Virginia, 1650-1699”
Four dissertations currently in progress.
Recent Presentations
“Early American Women's Biographies: The State of the Field,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, July 20, 2012.
“A Tale of Two Empires: British India and the Early American Republic,” Dartmouth College, April 25, 2012.
“Founding Mothers: How Women Shaped the Founding,” University of Oklahoma, Teach-In on the Founding, February 27, 2012.
“George Washington and the Challenge of Party Politics in the 1790s,” Alexandria Masonic Memorial, February 22, 2012.
“George Washington’s Anglo-Indian Relatives: Negotiating Race, Class, and Identity in the Early American Republic,” University of Maryland Seminar on Early American History, Oct. 14, 2011; University of Delaware, Nov. 15, 2011.
“Imagining Empires: Race and Political Economy in Thomas Law’s Vision of British India and the Early American Republic,” Johns Hopkins University History Department Graduate Seminar, April 11, 2011.
“Petticoat Politics: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic,” Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, March 26, 2011.
“A New National Politics,” Chicago Conference on the American Revolution, February 11, 2011.
“The Significance of the ‘Global Turn’ for the Early American Republic,” Presidential Address, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, July 24, 2010.
Roundtable on Zagarri’s Revolutionary Backlash (commentary by John Murrin, Cassandra Good, and C. Dallett Hemphill), McNeil Center for Early American Studies seminar, June 14, 2010.
“Thomas Law: An East India Nabob in the Early American Republic,” Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture conference, June 11, 2010.
“Calcutta on the Potomac: An East India Nabob in the Early American Republic,” Triangle Early American History Seminar, National Humanities Center, April 23, 2010.
“Pious Flames: Early American Perceptions of the Hindu Suttee,” Organization of American Historians Association, March 27, 2009.
Roundtable on Woody Holton’s Unruly Americans and the Making of the Constitution, Southern American Studies Association, February 13, 2009.
In the Media
“Women and the American Revolution,” CSPAN broadcast of lecture at the University of Oklahoma, Feb. 27, 2012.
Interview on Politics of Size and Revolutionary Backlash on CSPAN BookTV, Oct. 16, 2011.
Review of Pauline Maier’s Ratification in Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2010.
Review of Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams in Washington Post, Feb. 14, 2010.
Review of Edith B. Gelles, Abigail & John in San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 2009.
On-camera historian, The Real Martha Washington (Fairfax Television Network), 2008.
On-camera historian, George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King (PBS), 1993.