Molly McClain, PhD, was born in San Diego and raised in Orange County. She is author of Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy, 1836-1932 (2017). She is a professor of history at the University of San Diego and co-editor of The Journal of San Diego History.
A graduate of the University of Chicago (BA) and Yale University (MA & PhD), McClain began her career as a historian of early modern Britain. Her first book, Beaufort: A Duke and His Duchess, 1657-1715 (2001) chronicled the lives of the duke and duchess of Beaufort who survived the tumultuous and uncertain decades that followed the English civil war by creating a remarkable political partnership. Together, they worked to restore their family’s estates and political power base as well as their home, Badminton House in Gloucestershire. Her work on the duchess of Beaufort’s gardens and botanical collections led to an invitation to write “Gardens” for Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History(2016).
McClain also explored the early life of Queen Mary II, best known for her royal partnership “William & Mary,” in “Love, Friendship, and Power: Queen Mary II’s Letters to Frances Apsley,” The Journal of British Studies 47, no. 3 (July 2008): 505-27. In 2009, this article received an honorable mention at the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies.
In 2005, McClain began co-editing The Journal of San Diego History for the San Diego History Center. A ninth-generation San Diegan, she felt strongly about the need to encourage writers to explore the region’s fascinating, and understudied, past. She began writing articles on San Diego history, many of which focused on women’s activities in the region. These included a history of ZLAC Rowing Club, founded in 1892, the world’s oldest rowing club for women, and “A Room of Their Own: The Contribution of Women to the Panama-California Exposition, 1915,” among other articles. An invitation to explore the origins of The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, CA, led her to the vast, and newly cataloged, papers of Ellen Browning Scripps at Scripps College. She spent nearly a decade exploring the life of one of California’s most important philanthropists. In 2017, McClain published Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy, 1836-1932 to outstanding reviews.
A trustee of the La Jolla Historical Society, McClain co-curated From Jazz Age to Our Age: Architects and Developers of 1920s La Jolla (2016-17). She also wrote “Architecture as Nature’s Canvas” forIrving J. Gill: Illustrating New Architecture (Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, 2016). She is currently working as historical consultant for Tangible Memories: Portraits, Relics, and Reliquaries of La Jolla Women Pioneers (La Jolla Historical Society, 2019) and as a consulting archivist at the San Diego History Center.
McClain joined the faculty of the University of San Diego (USD) in 1995. Academic honors include USD’s distinguished University Professorship and the Davies Award for Faculty Achievement. She is former chair of the Department of History (2004-09) and former director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program (2008-16).
