Miriam+Usher+Chrisman+background

Miriam Usher Chrisman (May 20, 1920-November 17, 2008)

Born on May 20, 1920 in Ithica, New York, Miriam (Usher) Chrisman was a well-loved professor and a treasured mentor to dozens of students during her long tenure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Beginning in 1962, Chrisman taught in the Department of History, continuing to teach past her retirement in 1985 for another. Raised in a family that prized academic achievement and a sense of the past, Chrisman seemed destined for a career in history. The daughter of Abbott Payson // Usher ////, a distinguished// // economic historian at Cornell and later Harvard,// her roots in the intellectual elite of Massachusetts ran deep: her ancestor Hezekiah Usher, an English emigrant to Boston in the 1630s, imported the press and type with which John Eliot’s Indian Bible was printed and a founder of the Old South Church in Boston. This strong Protestant heritage was no doubt an influence in her field of research: the German Reformation. From early on, she showed academic promise. Graduating magna cum laude with an A.B. from Smith College in 1941 ,m asters degrees in education from Smith College (1948), and economics from American University (date???) , before earning her MA (1959) and PhD (1962) in history from Yale. One of the times Chrisman lived outside Massachusetts for an extended period came during the Second World War. After marrying Donald Chrisman, a medical student at Harvard on November 29, 1943, Chrisman worked as an intern and research assistant in various agencies in Washington, D.C., while her husband served on active duty with the Navy , aboard the Gleaves-class destroyer, U.S.S. Baldwin in the Atlantic and Mediterranean seeing action at D-Day and Yalta. After the war, the Chrismans settled in Northampton, Massachusetts, where Donald began an orthopedic practice at Cooley Dickinson H ospital while Miriam returned to graduate school and, eventually, to a position on faculty at UMass Amherst. The author of seven books and a meticulous record keeper, Chrisman became a leading authority on the social history of the German Reformation, conducting most of her research in and near Strasbourg (now in France . Her first book, //Strasbourg and the Reform// (1967) is recognized as a landmark in its field, balancing both high culture and low and an appreciation for the impact of the Reformation on the lives of the non-elite. In later works such as [|//Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480–1599//] (1982) and [|//Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519–30//] (1996), she explored the impact of print culture in German cities during the early Reformation, again with an eye on social movements and the common folk. An avid world traveler, Chrisman's several research trips to Strasbourg influenced her life in other ways: h er experiences led her husband, Donald,to change careers from orthopedic s to archaeologist. Chrisman was widely recognized for her scholarship. Awarded the Prix d’honneur by the Societe des Amis de Vieux Strasbourg, she received an honorary doctor of humane letters from Valparaiso University, and the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale University, and was twice awarded the UMass Chancellor’s Medal, first as a Distinguished Faculty Lecturer in 1985 and again in 2000 for her support of the Du Bois Library. In her honor, the Society for Reformation Research established the Miriam U. Chrisman Travel Fellowship, which provides grants of $1500 every other year in odd numbered years (2009, 2011, etc.) to support advanced graduate students in conducting research abroad.

Bibliography Miriam Usher Chrisman.* //Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change//. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Miriam Usher Chrisman* (editor, with Otto Grundler). //Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century//. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 1978. Miriam Usher Chrisman.* //Bibliography of Strasbourg Imprints, 1480-1599//. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Miriam Usher Chrisman.* //Lay Culture, Learned Culture: Books and Social Change in Strasbourg, 1480-1599//. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Miriam U. Chrisman, “Printing and the Evolution of Lay Culture in Strasbourg, 1480-1599,” //The German People and the Reformation,// Edited by R. Po-Chia Hsia (Cornell University Press, 1988). Miriam Usher Chrisman* (honoree). //The Process of Change in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honor of Miriam Usher Chrisman//, edited by Phillip N. Bebb and Sherrin Marshall. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988. Miriam Usher Chrisman.* //Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519-1530//. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1996.