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, Staff Wellbeing; Faculty, Graduate, Undergraduate Recruitment, Retention, & Mentoring; Academic and Community Activism, Academe & Politics.

<< On research leave at the Center for Humanities Research, Fall 2025 >>

Recipient of the 2021 Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence

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 core faculty in Cultural Studies and affiliated faculty in War and the Military in Society, Women and Gender Studies, the Center for Mason Legacies. She is the Vice President of the International Commission on the History of the French Revolution, a past president of the Western Society for French History, and an editorial board member of the AHR, French History, and other journals. Dr. Pichichero is dedicated to being a publicly engaged scholar. In this work, she serves as the President of the Board of Trustees of Tudor Place, a historic home museum and garden of the descendants of Martha Washington in Washington, D.C., and she has been featured on the BBC, National Public Radio, Radio France, NBC News, C-SPAN, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Forbes, The Hill, Médiapart, and Authority Magazine.

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 GMU's Center for Humanities Research, 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).

In her scholarly work, Dr. Pichichero is an interdisciplinary expert in the study of war, slavery, empire, colonialism, race, afro-feminism, and diaspora. She combines these interests with her training in critical theory, literary studies, performing arts, philosophy, and archival research to interrogate and contribute to multiple fields of inquiry. These include the Caribbean, the Enlightenment, the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, the Napoleonic wars, and contemporary France. Pichichero's peer-reviewed articles have appeared 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. 

Her first book, The Military Enlightenment: War and Culture in the French Empire from Louis XIV to Napoleon (Cornell University Press, 2017; paperback, 2021; trans. Chinese, Russian), 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.

Dr. Pichichero is currently working on two projects. The first is an experimental biography of Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-George (1745-1799) and the second is a digital humanities database, the Pierre Boulle Database of Black Lives and People of Color in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France. 

Dr. Pichichero has a long and distinguished record of service to her departments, college, university, profession, and local community.

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