Christy L Pichichero

Christy L Pichichero

Christy L Pichichero

Associate Professor

Early Modern, Enlightenment, Revolutionary History, Literature, Art, & Music of the French Empire; Theories, Histories, and Practices of African Diaspora; Slavery & its Afterlives; War & Culture; Critical Race & Mixed-Race Studies; Gender & Sexuality; Human Rights & Social Justice; Theater; Film; Digital Humanities; Medical History; History of Emotion; Women’s Writing & History; History of News & Information Networks; Critical Pedagogy; Inclusive Pedagogy & Curricular Design; Student/Faculty Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Wellbeing; Faculty, Graduate, Undergraduate Recruitment, Retention, & Mentoring; Academic and Community Activism, Academe & Politics.

 

Recipient of the 2021 Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion & 2022 NAACP Arlington President's Award for GMU Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence (ARIE) Task Force

Dr. Christy Pichichero (pronounced \pi-‘ki-kə-rō\) holds a joint appointment as Associate Professor of History, French, and African and African American Studies. She is affiliated with the Women and Gender Studies and War and the Military in Society programs as well as the Center for Mason Legacies.

She received her B.A. from Princeton University (Comparative Literature), a B.M. from the Eastman School of Music (Voice and Opera), and her Ph.D. from Stanford University (French Studies). She has held fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, King’s College at the University of Cambridge (UK), the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France), the Centre for French History and Culture of the University of St Andrews (Scotland), West Point Military Academy, and the Society of the Cincinnati. While holding a postdoctoral fellowship in Stanford’s Introduction to the Humanities Program, Dr. Pichichero was a faculty member and then Associate Director of the Middlebury French School (Mills College campus).

Pichichero's articles on Critical Race Theory, Afro-feminist microhistories, French exceptionalism, pedagogy, early modern language and drama, and cultures of war have appeared or are forthcoming in venues such as PMLA, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, French Historical Studies, Modern Language Notes, Renaissance Drama, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, and H-France Salon. She is the Past President of the Western Society for French History, the recipient of the 2021 Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence at GMU, a board member of several journals and professional societies, and a public intellectual recently featured on Médiapart, National Public Radio, NBC News, C-SPAN, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Forbes, The Hill: Changing America, and Authority Magazine.

Her first book, The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Cornell University Press, 2017; paperback, 2021; Chinese and Russian translations forthcoming), was a finalist for the Kenshur Book Prize for best book in eighteenth-century studies. The book argues that "military enlightenment" is not a paradoxical expression, but rather one of the most important synergies and legacies of the Enlightenment. Combining the study of literary works, art, treatises of moral philosophy, and martial writings dating to the period of the first global wars, the book traces an evolving public discourse on how to wage war efficiently and effectively, yet humanely and in ways that advanced nascent visions of multiculturalism and social justice.

Dr. Pichichero is currently working on two book-length research projects relating to Black Studies, diaspora, slavery, and empire. The first is an experimental biography of Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-George, and the second is a study of African diasporic identities across empires in the age of slavery. 

Dr. Pichichero has more than twenty years of experience and is an international thought-leader in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and anti-racism. She has held multiple leadership positions at Stanford, GMU, and in the profession. At George Mason, she serves as the Director of Faculty Diversity in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She was a co-chair of the University Policies and Practices Committee of the presidential Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Taskforce and served on the university's Board of Visitors as a faculty representative on the Academic Programs, Diversity, and University Community Committee. At Stanford, she worked with the Faculty Development and Diversity office to produce the video series “Student Voices: Why Faculty Diversity” that educates faculty on why diversity in the academy, and therefore in faculty hiring, matters. She also worked with the Vice Provost for Graduate Education to pioneer the DARE program, which is a preparing future faculty program for doctoral candidates whose presence would diversify their respective fields. She is an active student mentor and has worked extensively on inclusive teaching and syllabus constructions as well as issues of structural discrimination in the academy.

Dr. Pichichero was Graduate Advisor of French from 2014-2019 and served on the Ph.D. admissions committee in History and Art History in 2018-2019. She has served on the Academic Initiatives and External Academic Relations university standing committees. She previously served on the Diversity Committee of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, the Pride Week Planning Committee, and the Faculty Senate Technology Policy Committee. 

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