Randolph-Macon College History Professor Anne Throckmorton has received a grant from the Mednick Fellowship Committee of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges (VFIC). The grant will enable Throckmorton to continue research that she began last summer in London, England.

“I am delighted to receive this honor because it will allow me to study the dispatches of a seventeenth-century English diplomat stationed in Brussels,” says Throckmorton. “The papers of William Trumbull include his observations of English lay Catholic exiles who fled their homes because their religion was banned. The papers provide vivid evidence of how early modern people struggled to negotiate the boundaries between the sacred and secular as well as personal conscience and public duty.”

Throckmorton, who teaches a variety of courses, including The Reformation, The Renaissance, and The History of Witchcraft, says, “I am so grateful to the VFIC for enabling me to continue my research in London. I also owe Randolph-Macon College a huge debt of gratitude for the opportunities it has given me to pursue my passion.”

In addition, Throckmorton recently received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award will fund four weeks of summer research at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California and participation in a seminar, “The Formation and Re-formation of the Book.”John King ’65, the director of the seminar, visited RMC in fall 2017 and gave a talk, “How Anne Askew Read her Bible,” in conjunction with the college’s Women’s Studies Lecture Series.

“I’ll be delving into the publishing industry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” explains Throckmorton. “One of my research topics is about the wiliest and most prolific English Catholic book smugglers of the age. I also plan to develop a course about the power of books, entitled Reading Revolutions.”

Anne Throckmorton
Throckmorton joined the faculty at Randolph-Macon College in 2008. She earned a B.A. from the University of Virginia, an M.A. from Emerson College, an M.A. from the University of Virginia, and a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

In 2009 she was awarded RMC’s Thomas Branch Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award is given annually, and the recipient is selected by the students of Phi Beta Kappa, Omicron Delta Kappa, and the Honors Program.

In 2015 Throckmorton and one of her former students were invited to contribute chapters to a book that offers scholarly critique of Showtime’s “The Tudors,” a historical fiction television series set in sixteenth-century England.

Throckmorton has since 2009 brought speakers to campus for the college’s annual Women’s Studies Lecture Series. Previous themes for the series include “Outsiders,” “Objects of Beauty” and “Fallen Women.”

In 2016 Throckmorton was the recipient of a Walter Williams Craigie Teaching Endowment and a Rashkind Endowment Grant.