Join the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Thursday, August 24th, at 4:30pm for a Book Event with Lucia McMahon, Professor and Chair of History at William Paterson University.
This event will be held in the Howard and Abby Milstein Theater at Monticello's David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center. There will be a book signing and light reception following the talk.
This event is FREE and open to the public. Registration, however, is required to attend in person. Register here.
Unable to join us in person? This presentation is available online.
About the Book
Elizabeth Smith, a learned British woman born in the momentous year 1776, gained transnational fame posthumously for her extensive intellectual accomplishments, which encompassed astronomy, botany, history, poetry, and language studies. As she navigated her place in the world, Smith made a self-conscious decision to keep her many talents hidden from disapproving critics. Therefore, her rise to fame began only in 1808, when her posthumous memoir appeared.
In this elegantly written biography, Lucia McMahon reconstructs the places and social constellations that enabled Smith’s learning and adventures in England, Wales, and Ireland, and traces her transatlantic fame and literary afterlife across Britain and the United States. Through re-telling Elizabeth Smith’s fascinating life story and retracing her posthumous transatlantic fame, McMahon reveals a larger narrative about women’s efforts to enact learned and fulfilling lives, and the cultural reactions such aspirations inspired in the early nineteenth century.
Although Smith was cast as "exceptional" by her contemporaries and modern scholars alike, McMahon argues that her scholarly achievements, travel explorations, and posthumous fame were all emblematic of the age in which she lived. Offering insights into Romanticism, picturesque tourism, celebrity culture, and women’s literary productions, McMahon asks the provocative question, "How many seemingly exceptional women must we uncover in the historical record before we are no longer surprised?"
About the Author
Dr. Lucia McMahon is currently Professor and Chair of History at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ, where she regularly teaches courses in early national U.S. history and women’s history. She received her Ph.D. in History from Rutgers University, where her dissertation received the Dean’s Research Award. She is the author of several books and articles, including Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic (Cornell University Press, 2012), and The Journal of Rachel Van Dyke, 1810-1811 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).
Dr. McMahon wrote a particularly interesting blog post on Women's History Month, read it here.