Senior Scholar Citation (2020): Mary Gibson

It is with great pleasure and esteem that the Society for Italian Historical Studies awards the 2020 Senior Scholar Citation to Mary Gibson.

Mary Gibson is Professor Emeritus of History at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her innovative and interdisciplinary work on the intersection of law, gender, criminality, and the state transformed the way we understand crime and punishment in Liberal Italy, as well as how we see the Liberal State’s relationship to what it designated as unruly populations.

Her first two groundbreaking and award-winning books – Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 (2000) and Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso (2002) – were translated into Italian. Most recently, she published Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 (2019), in which she analyzed the Italian prison system against the discourses of biological determinism and nation-building and raised critical and relevant questions about how states mobilized and shaped incarceration for political and social agendas.

Professor Gibson introduced English-speaking audiences to the work of Cesare Lombroso through her translations of and scholarly introductions to Criminal Man (2006) and Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman (2004).

She is the author of articles and books chapter too vast to number or name and on topics as varied and wide-ranging as youth and criminality, Italian Women and the Left, and the Southern Question and Italian Criminologists.

Mary Gibson has won all of the prizes in the field, including the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome, the Fulbright Grant, and a number of research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In addition to an extraordinarily distinguished scholarly contribution to the field of Modern Italian History, Professor Gibson is a leader, mentor, and role model. She has sat on the editorial boards of Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Studi sulla Questione Criminale  and Genesis and she has taken on leadership roles in a number of professional organization, including serving as Vice President and President of the SIHS.

Mary Gibson is not only a path-breaking scholar and a visible professional; she is a dedicated and thoughtful mentor who has always been eager to read and comment on the work of others and to offer career and scholarly advice.

All in all, Professor Gibson is a role model for balancing rigorous and path-breaking scholarly production, deep intellectual engagement with critical ideas about state and society, active and committed service to the profession and to her colleagues – it is a pleasure to have her in our community of scholars and thinkers.

Congratulations!