APS elects Dean Faust as member

Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Lincoln Professor of History at Harvard University, has been elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society (APS). Election to the APS honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields. There are currently more than 700 APS members around the world.

Prior to joining the institute in January 2001, Faust was the Annenberg Professor of History and the director of women’s studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A leading historian of the Civil War and the American South, Faust is the author of five books, including “Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War” (Vintage, 1997), for which she won the prestigious Francis Parkman Prize. From 1999 to 2000, Faust served as president of the Southern Historical Association, and from 1992 to 1996, she was vice president of the American Historical Association. Faust received her B.A. (1968) from Bryn Mawr, magna cum laude with honors in history, and received her M.A. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) in American civilization from the University of Pennsylvania.

As founding dean of the Radcliffe Institute, Faust has a special connection to one of the first women admitted to the APS. In 1869, Elizabeth Agassiz, who was associated with the work of her husband, 19th century naturalist and Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, was elected to membership. Elizabeth Agassiz later founded what would become Radcliffe College and, ultimately, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.