Lois Green Schwoerer

Lois Green Schwoerer, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History Emerita at The George Washington University and Scholar in Residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library, died on August 10 in Washington, D.C. She was 98 years old. Born in Roanoke, Virginia, to Edward Shelley Green, Jr. and Emma Lois Hester Green, she grew up in New York City and graduated from Hunter College High School. She earned a B.A. degree in 1949 from Smith College, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She received an M.A. degree in 1952 and a Ph.D. degree in European and English History in 1956 from Bryn Mawr College. Her dissertation mentor was Caroline Robbins.

After teaching briefly at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Pittsburgh, she came to George Washington University in 1965 as the first woman in the History Department. She was tenured and promoted, eventually reaching the rank of Professor of History in 1976 and Chairwoman of the History Department from 1979 to 1981. A member of the Founding Committee that created the Women’s Studies program in 1975 and established a M.A. degree in Women’s Studies, Schwoerer also added a course in the history of European Women to the University’s curriculum. In 1988, she received the Award for Outstanding Contribution to the University and in 1992 was appointed the Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History. At her retirement in 1996, the Lois G. Schwoerer Graduate Fellowship in Early Modern English and European History was created by contributions from students, friends and family. In 1997, a festschrift in her honor, Politics and the Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain, was published. In 2002, she received an Honorary Degree of Letters from George Washington University.

Lois Schwoerer published seven books. "No Standing Armies!" The Anti-Standing Army Ideology in Seventeenth Century England (1974) won the annual prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for the best book written by a woman historian. The Declaration of Rights, 1689 (1981), received Honorable Mention in the John Ben Snow competition; Lady Rachel Russell, "One of the Best of Women," followed in 1988; then The Ingenious Mr. Henry Care: Restoration Publicist in 2001; and Gun Culture in Early Modern England in 2016. She edited a collection of essays and co-edited another, both published by Cambridge University Press, both of which addressed topics that engaged her over the course of her life: the history of politics and political thought in early modern England. Over the years, Schwoerer published approximately fifty articles, two of which won prizes, and she presented numerous papers at meetings of professional societies. Schwoerer held fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Henry Huntington Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation. In 1980, the Royal Historical Society, Great Britain, elected her a Fellow. A founding member of the Center for the History of British Political Thought at the Folger Shakespeare Library, she served on its Steering Committee from 1982 to 1997. She was a member of Yale University’s Committee on Parliamentary History from 2002 to 2007. From 1987 to 1989, Schwoerer was president of the North American Conference on British Studies. In 2008, she joined other historians in presenting an amici curia to the Supreme Court regarding the Haller case.

Lois and her husband Frank Schwoerer were avid sailors, sailing their Alberg 30 on the Chesapeake Bay on many weekends and going on several weeklong bareboat charters in the British Virgin Islands. She won the Severn Sailing Association MS Regatta in 1984 with a crew of 2 friends. She also enjoyed playing tennis.

Lois frequently traveled to the UK and Europe for research and pleasure. She and her husband lived in London for 5 months in 1993.

Lois enjoyed hosting parties for friends. She was a member of the Cosmos Club, Washington, DC.

Lois Schwoerer will be remembered fondly by all those who had the privilege to work with her. She had tremendous strength of will, and she certainly knew her own mind. She brought out the best in her students. And she truly loved the study of British history and the Folger Shakespeare Library, where she will be missed.

Her husband Frank Schwoerer died in 2000. She is survived by a son Dr. John Schwoerer of Storrs, CT, and two grandchildren, Emma Schwoerer of Stamford, CT and Charles Schwoerer of New York, NY.