Alan Dawley (1943–2008): Memorial and Assessment

Alan Dawley: A Personal Remembrance

Ann Marie Nicolosi^a1

^a1 The College of New Jersey

Alan Dawley was many things to many people. He was a prolific and important scholar whose work has helped to define and shape the study of American history. He was a committed activist, a loving family man, a world traveler, and a man whose intellectual capacities were matched only by his generosity as a teacher and mentor. It is in this latter role that I write about Alan and in this role that Alan left his mark in a very personal sense for me.

I had the pleasure of knowing Alan in many capacities. He was my colleague, my fellow activist, sometimes my battle companion, and my friend. But it is as my teacher and mentor that I will remember him best. Indeed, even as we became colleagues and friends, there still remained the element of the wise teacher and mentor and, perhaps, the adoring student who recognized the towering accomplishments of her teacher, accomplishments greater than what she, or very few others in the profession for that matter, could ever hope to achieve.

Ann Marie Nicolosi is an associate professor at the College of New Jersey where she holds a joint appointment in the History Department and the women's and gender studies program. She was a student, friend, and colleague of Alan Dawley. Her current research interests focus on the ways in which women of the suffrage movement and the second-wave women's movement, and their opposition, used imagery and media to support their respective causes and agenda. She is working on her first book, “Beauty, Body, and Politics: Comparisons of the First and Second Waves.”