Dr. John G. Garrard, Professor Emeritus and former Head of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies, passed away in February. He was 91.
A prolific scholar, Garrard published nine books and more than 60 articles on Russian/Soviet cultural history, World War II, the Holocaust and the Russian Orthodox Church. Garrard began at the University of Arizona in 1984 and retired in 2010.
Born in 1934 in England, Garrard earned his B.A. in Persian and Turkish Studies in 1958 from Oxford University and a master’s degree, graduate certificate and Ph.D., in 1966, from Columbia University. He became a U.S. citizen on July 4, 1977 at Monticello.
Prior to joining the U of A faculty, he taught at Dartmouth College, Indiana University and the University of Virginia, where he was Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies.
Garrard served twice as a Senior Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a division of the Smithsonian Institute, in 2004-05 and 1984-85. His donated database, The Brest Ghetto Passport archive, is hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society and contains 12,640 names of victims. In 2008, he was recognized for Distinguished Contributions to the Humanities.
He is survived by his wife and co-author, Carol Garrard.