Mary Ashburn Miller,
Professor of History & Humanities
Mary Ashburn Miller joined the Reed College faculty in 2008. Her scholarship focuses on the cultural history of France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and her 2011 book, A Natural History of Revolution: Violence and Nature in the French Revolutionary Imagination, explored the intersections between understandings of natural and political transformation in the Enlightenment and French Revolution. She has written several articles on the history of emigration during the French Revolution, and her current research is on anti-drowning campaigns and public health in Enlightenment Paris.
In the history department, Mary teaches courses that address wide-ranging topics in modern European history, including the history of science, military history, natural disasters and environmental history, and the history of the book. She has taught multiple classes in Reed's humanities program, including Humanities 110, early modern European humanities, and modern European humanities. A passionate teacher, she served as the director of Reed’s Center for Teaching and Learning from 2021 to 2024.
Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright program, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Mary received her BA from the University of Virginia and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University.