Suzanne M. Desan (born 1957) is an American historian. She is the Vilas-Shinner Professor of History at the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

, and the author or editor of four books on

French history The first written records for the history of France appeared in the Iron Age. What is now France made up the bulk of the region known to the Romans as Gaul. The first writings on indigenous populations mainly start in the first century BC. Greek ...

Early life

Suzanne Desan graduated from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. She earned a PhD from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Her sister is Christine Desan, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School (also a graduate of Princeton).https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2001/01/20/obituaries/dc9ac704-5b54-4935-863e-14bba01543bf/

Career

Desan teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is the Vilas-Shinner Professor of History. She is the author of two books and the editor of two more books on French history, especially the role of women in the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

. Desan won the

Herbert Baxter Adams Prize The Herbert Baxter Adams Prize is an annual book prize of the American Historical Association. It is awarded for "a distinguished first book by a young scholar in the field of European history", and is named in honor of Herbert Baxter Adams, who ...

from the

American Historical Association The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world. Founded in 1884, the AHA works to protect academic freedom, develop professional s ...

in 1992, and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1998.

Works

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References

Living people Princeton University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty 21st-century American historians American women academics American women historians 1957 births 21st-century American women {{US-historian-stub