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About Mark
Mark Metzler Sawin is Professor of History and Program Director for History & Political Science at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he joined the faculty in 2001 as a professor of U.S. history. He currently serves as director of EMU's Honors program and has held the position of chair of the History and Political Science program multiple times (2003–04, 2009–12, 2017–20, 2024–present). Sawin also served as president of the Faculty Senate from 2020 to 2022. He earned a B.A. in Literature and Political Science from Goshen College in Indiana, followed by an M.A. in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2001, both in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to academia, he trained as a chef and worked in freelance journalism. In professional organizations, Sawin has been president and board member of the Eastern American Studies Association, chair of the Regional Chapters Committee for the American Studies Association, and area chair for American Studies in the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association.
Sawin's research specializes in the literary and popular culture of antebellum America (1840s–1850s), as well as local Black history projects. His first book, Raising Kane: Elisha Kent Kane and the Culture of Fame in Antebellum America (American Philosophical Society, 2008), examines Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane's manipulation of media for celebrity. Recent publications include annotated editions of Ned Buntline's novels The Volunteer; or, the Maid of Monterey (Emu Editions, 2020) and The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main (Emu Editions, 2021), along with The Way It Was... Coming of Age in Harrisonburg, VA in the Jim Crow Era: The Memoirs of Doris Harper Allen (2023), which he edited with introductory essays. He co-authored "The 1910 Legal Lynching of Pink Barbour in Harrisonburg, Virginia" in The Virginia Magazine of History & Biography (2024) and contributed the historical introduction to George Newman's A Miserable Revenge (2025). Sawin received a Fulbright Scholar award at the University of Zagreb, Croatia (2008–09), and has taught there subsequently (2017, 2019, 2024, 2026), as well as serving as guest professor at LCC International University in Lithuania (2023).
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