Catherine Allgor Professor of History Ph.D., Yale University , 1998 Fields of Interest: Early America; political women, public history (951) 827-1972 catherine.allgor@ucr.edu

After a career in the theatre, Catherine Allgor attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, as a Frances Perkins Scholar and graduated summa cum laude in History. She received her Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University, where she also won the Yale Teaching Award. Her dissertation on women and politics in early Washington garnered prizes both for the best dissertation in American History at Yale and for the best dissertation in U.S. Women's history in the country. Professor Allgor's book, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government, published by the University of Virginia Press won the prize for the best first book by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Pulitzer Prize Winner Joseph J. Ellis calls it, "An extraordinary piece of work, easily one of the most intellectually original and stylishly elegant first books I have ever read." In 2002-2004 Professor Allgor was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University.  Professor Allgor has written on politics, women, and religion for national publications.  Her latest book is A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Henry Holt, 2006).

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