Wesleyan University, the highly rated liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut, has announced that six faculty members will be appointed to endowed chairs as of July 1. Two of the six professors named to endowed chairs are women.
Jill G. Morawski was named the Wilbur Fisk Osborne Professor. The position was endowed by a gift from the university’s 1861 class valedictorian. Professor Morawski has been serving as a professor of psychology, professor of political science, and professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Wesleyan. She is also the director of the university’s Center for the Humanities.
Professor Morawski joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1980. She has been chair of the faculty and head of the department of psychology and the women’s studies program. She is the author of Practicing Feminisms, Reconstructing Psychology: Notes on a Liminal Science (University of Michigan Press).
Dr. Morawski is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She holds a master’s degree’s from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario.
Laurie Nussdorfer was named to the William F. Armstrong Professorship, which was established in 1921. She has been serving as professor of history and professor of letters at Wesleyan.
Professor Nussdorfer joined the Wesleyan faculty in 1986. She currently serves as vice president of the Society of Italian Historical Studies. Her research focuses on the history of Rome from 1500 to 1800. Her most recent book is Brokers of Public Trust: Notaries in Early Modern Rome (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Dr. Nussdorfer is a graduate of Yale University. She holds a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a second master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
I am the reference libarian at a small private library in Derby, Ct., about 1/2 hour from Wesleyan. We were founded by Wilbur F. Osborne for whom the endowed chair is named. His late daughter and only surviving child was Frances Osborne Kellogg, who left no descendants, but also endowed the Derby Neck Library, which flourishes to this day. She would greatly approve of such a talented and outstanding woman holding the chair. She herself was an environmentalist, breeder of Holstein cattle, patron of the arts, and pioneering woman industrialist here in Derby. Goodspeed to your scholarship and teaching.