Nicholas Syrett

Nick Syrett is an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and a professor in the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, which he served as chair from 2017 to 2022. He is also a coeditor of the Journal of the History of Sexuality.

Syrett holds an A.B. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan. He studies gender, sexuality, and childhood in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. His articles appear in the American Historical Review, the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and the Pacific Historical Review, among others.

He is a coeditor of Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present (2015) and the author of four books: The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities (2009), American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States (2016), and An Open Secret: The Family Story of Robert and John Gregg Allerton (2021), and The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime (2023), which was supported by an ACLS fellowship.

Contact Dean for the following College units:

African & African-American Studies

American Studies

East Asian Languages & Cultures

Film & Media Studies

French, Francophone, & Italian Studies

Global & International Studies

Slavic, German, & Eurasian Studies

Spanish & Portuguese

Theatre & Dance

Visual Art

Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies

Open Language Resource Center

The Commons

College-wide Responsibilities

Committee on Evaluation of Chairs & Directors

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

FRESSH