BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Pamela J. Stewart is a historian in the School of Letters and Sciences at Arizona State University, Downtown Phoenix campus, with a Ph.D. in Modern European History and Comparative Women’s History. She has taught at ASU since 2002. Her academic background includes diverse studies on Islam in Modern Europe, the Early-Modern Mediterranean World, and Women in Colonial Empires. Her initial research interests centered on working women in Paris during the Franco-Prussian war and revolutionary Commune, 1870-1871.

More recently her historical research has shifted to focus on women athletes in U.S. History and women-headed households in urban contexts. Current research focuses on Ina E. Gittings, the first university Director of Women’s Physical Education in Arizona (1920), titled, ‘Daring and Isolated Experiments in Sports’: Ina E. Gittings (1885-1966). Gittings was a pole-vaulter and all-around athlete at University of Nebraska, 1902-06, a single woman homesteader in Montana during World War I, and a pioneer in competitive athletics for college women. That endeavor grew from research for another developing project on women-headed households in Arizona, 1870-1940, also underway.

Dr. Stewart teaches broadly in Women’s, European, Global, and United States History, encouraging students to understand the value of thinking historically in whatever interests they pursue.  She has been the recipient of research, teaching and service awards. For research this includes the Coordinating Council of Women in History Catherine Prelinger Award for a woman historian who had a non-traditional educational path to a Ph.D. As a teacher she is especially proud of receiving Arizona State University’s Centennial Professorship (2007-08), determined by students, recognizing excellent classroom teaching, service to the community, and linking classroom teaching to the world at large.

She serves as ASU Chapter President of the National Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi, which welcomes outstanding Juniors, Seniors, and Graduate students from all degree programs into its ranks at an annual initiation in the spring. In 2012 Stewart received a Love of Learning Award from Phi Kappa Phi, allowing her to attend a historians’ conference. She also serves on the Board of the Western Association of Women Historians and is an Affiliate Faculty for The Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at ASU.

Stewart is also a docent at Phoenix Art Museum with a particular interest in modern and contemporary art and women artists. In that capacity she offers regular public tours of the Museum’s collection, gives presentations in the community, such as, “Modern Art and the Women Who Made It,” and is writing research papers on the artists and artwork at the Museum for the docent program.  She also creates opportunities for art, artists, and members of the ASU and local downtown Phoenix community to come together, most recently hosting a viewing and discussion of the Peabody Award-winning series, Art21: Art in the 21st Century as part of ASU’s Project Humanities kick-off week with award-winning artists engaging with scholars and community members on the topic of “Humor. Seriously.”

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