Early U.S. history specialist joins College’s faculty

Alexandra Garrett joins the Saint Michael’s History Department for this Fall Semester as of August 1, 2022, as assistant professor in U.S. History specializing in pre-contact to 1865.

Alexandra Garrett

For the past two years, Garrett worked at Iona University as the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies and University of Virginia Press Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022). Before that, she worked as a Teaching Assistant while earning her doctorate at the University of Virginia (2014-2020).

She recently moved from Yonkers, NY, to Burlington, as a newlywed, with her husband, Geoffrey, who works in elections data journalism. “We met in graduate school in Charlottesville, VA, and were married there this summer,” said Garrett. “We are excited to explore everything Chittenden County has to offer!”

The new Saint Michael’s history professor’s hobbies, shared with her husband, include “mastering new crock pot recipes, indulging in all things Lord of the Rings, and, hopefully, sharpening our long-dull skiing skills.”

Garrett said that, having attended a small, religiously affiliated liberal arts school — St. Olaf in Minnesota, founded in the Lutheran tradition — for her undergraduate education, “I immediately felt like I would feel at home at Saint Mike’s. I cherish the intimate scholarly communities, small student-to-faculty ratio, and tight-knit cultures of such institutions. I sincerely look forward to getting to know my students, advising them in various research projects, taking them on local historical field trips, and eventually becoming a faculty leader for an Academic Study Trip”

She said at Saint Michael’s, “I hope to enact a key part of a professor’s job: non-religiously ‘ministering to all’ through education. My teaching and research philosophies are guided by my belief that historians of early America can use our knowledge of the past to help build a more equitable United States.”

Garrett believes that both interests work in tandem, explaining, “My research into the complicated factors that structured America’s past socioeconomic and gender relations enables me to more clearly teach Saint Mike’s students how people then, and now, can create change for the better over time. I hope that, after learning about the historical roots of familiar aspects of their everyday lives in my classroom, Saint Mike’s students can then confidently challenge accepted truths, think about the world in new ways, and put their skills to use to change that world.”