Mary Beth Norton

Professor Mary Beth Norton is the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History Emerita at Cornell University, whose research focuses on gender and politics in Early America. She has written four books and a series of articles about women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as a book on the loyalist exiles of the American Revolution and a study of the events of the year 1774 (her most recent work). Her books have won the Berkshire Conference Book Prize and English-Speaking Union’s Ambassador Book Award, and been finalists for LA Times Book Prize and Pulitzer Prize. Over the years, Norton has held multiple fellowships such as the L.A. Times Distinguished Fellowship, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellowship, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Starr Foundation Fellowship, Guggenheim Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities. She has been President of the Society of American Historians and Vice President for Research, then later President of the American Historical Association (2018). .