Associate professor elected to New York Academy of History

Susan Lewis, associate professor of history at the State University of New York at New Paltz, has been elected a fellow of the New York Academy of History (NYAH).

Elected fellows are historians, independent scholars, public historians, museum curators and administrators, educators, archivists and others with a record of achievement and publications. Membership is by invitation only.

“Professor Lewis’s election to the New York Academy of History is a much deserved honor, as well as an opportunity to promote the study of New York history through the unified activities of the Academy’s fellows,” said Stella Deen, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Lewis, who teaches United States History, New York State History and American Women’s History courses, has presented her research at numerous national and international conferences, and published essays in edited collections from Ashgate, Rutgers, and SUNY Press. She is currently writing a college textbook on New York State history, “New York Rediscovered,” and an associated blog of the same name, hosted by the Center for Research, Regional Education and Outreach at SUNY New Paltz.

In 2011, her monograph “Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Albany, New York, 1830-1885,” won the Hagley Book Prize for the best book published in business history, broadly defined. In addition, Lewis, with her husband, Richard, professor of art at Marist College, is the co-author of a college art appreciation textbook, “The Power of Art,” now in its third edition.

Lewis has twice been the recipient of a Cunningham Research Residency at the New York State Library, and has also served as one of the judges for that award. She is the recipient of the 2007-08 Liberal Arts & Sciences Teacher of the Year Award and the 2011 Liberal Arts and Sciences Excellence in Scholarship Award at SUNY New Paltz. Lewis has served on the Rosendale Library Board and the Board of Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz and is also a founding board member of Century House Historical Society in Rosendale.

She holds a B.A. in Art History from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in American History from Binghamton University.