Monday, August 12, 2013

Rest in Peace, Pauline Maier (1938-2013)

Via H-Law, Richard B. Bernstein just circulated this very sad news:
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Pauline Maier, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History at MIT and a leading scholar of American colonial, revolutionary, and early republic history, died this morning, 12 August 2013, after a brief illness.

A fuller essay detailing Maier's life, career, and scholarship will appear on H-LAW later today or tomorrow.
We will update this post as tributes and remembrances come in.

UPDATE: Richard B. Bernstein has now circulated a full and heartfelt obituary. Here's a particularly evocative excerpt:
[Pauline Maier] was not only a role model to me, as to so many other historians, but she also brought out the sheer fun of doing history, of digging through sources and framing arguments and testing them against our colleagues and against the existing literature. She also was one of the premier explainers of our profession, elucidating complex ideas and tangled historical events and processes in clear, graceful language, and always with a wry and creative sense of humor. And she epitomized the best of the profession in her ability to reach out – whether to colleagues, to prospective colleagues, or to a general audience – with infectious joy and excitement.
Read on here, at H-Net.

UPDATE: Fond remembrances continue to pour in --