Peggy Pascoe

Peggy Ann Pascoe (October 18, 1954–July 23, 2010) was an American historian. She was the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. She earned a B.A. from Montana State University in 1977, an M.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1980, and a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1986. She was a member of the University of Oregon History Department from 1996 until her death on July 23, 2010.

Education

• B.A. 1977 at Montana State University
• M.A. 1980 at Sarah Lawrence College
• Ph.D. 1986 at Stanford University

Professional Activities and Awards

• Jensen/Miller Article Prize (1991)
• University Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Utah (1995)
• National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (1996)
• ABC-CLIO America: History and Life Award (1997)
• Co-President, Coordinating Council for Women in History (1997-2000)
• National Council, American Studies Association (1998-2001)
• Ellis W. Hawley Prize and the Lawrence W. Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians for her book, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (2009)

Major publications

• What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Professor Pascoe provides a sweeping historical and sociological review of America's laws against interracial marriage, their origins, and demise, focusing not just on Southern states' statutes targeting intimate relationships of African Americans, but also the Western states' many laws targeting people of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Hawaiian descent, with particular attention to the cultural attitudes that once sustained these laws.

• Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Themes explored include

1. The romanticized theme of “white women civilizers of the West."
2. The ethnocentric and class-based idealization of Anglo-Protestant “civilization.”
3. Although the West offered opportunities for Victorian missionaries to exercise their moral authority and attain some political power and social influence, it also reinforced one facet of “womanhood” and entrenched women within this model. Ultimately, this rigid definition of the “true woman” limited society’s tolerance of the types of careers and activities women could engage.

External links

• Peggy Pascoe
• Pascoe's article on History News Network called "The Election of Barack Obama and the Politics of Interracial and Same-Sex Marriage" [1]
• Pascoe's article on History News Network called "Why the Ugly Rhetoric About Same-Sex Marriage is Familiar to this Historian of Miscegenation" [2]
• Pascoe's article on BackPast.org called "What Comes Naturally: The Loving v. Virginia Case in Historical Perspective" [3]