Smith College Announces the Retirement of Eight Women Who Were Full Professors

Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, has announced that 13 faculty members have retired. Eight of the retiring faculty members are women who served as full professors. Five of these held endowed chairs.

* Martha A. Ackelsberg was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government and professor of the study of women and gender. Dr. Ackelberg is a graduate of Radcliffe College. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Princeton University. She is the author of Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women (Indiana University Press, 1991).

* Susan C. Bourque was the Esther Booth Wiley Professor of Government. She joined the Smith faculty in 1970 and later served as provost and dean of the faculty. Professor Bourque is the author or editor of several books including Women on Power: Leadership Redefined (Northeastern University Press, 2001). She holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

* Nora F. Crow was professor of English language and literature. She specializes in eighteenth-century British literature. Dr. Crow is the author of The Poet Swift (University Press of New England, 1977). Professor Crow is a graduate of Stanford University. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

* Nola Reinhardt was a professor of economics. She was a co-founder of the Smith College Third World Development Studies Program in 1985 and she served as director of the program until her retirement. Professor Reinhardt is the author of Our Daily Bread: The Peasant Question and Family Farming in the Colombian Andes (University of California Press, 1988). Dr. Reinhardt earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

* Marilyn Schuster was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. From July 2009 to June 2014, she served as provost and dean of the faculty. Dr. Schuster is the author of Passionate Communities: Reading Lesbian Resistance in Jane Rule’s Fiction (New York University Press, 1999). Professor Schuster is a graduate of Mills College and holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in French language and literature from Yale University.

* Sharon Cadman Seelig was the Roe/Straut Professor in the Humanities. She is the author of three books including Autobiography and Gender in Early Modern Literature: Reading Women’s Lives, 1600-1680 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Professor Seelig is a graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

* Susan R. Van Dyne was a professor of the study of women and gender. She is the author of Revising Life: Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems (University of North Carolina, 1993). Professor Dyne is a graduate of the University of Missouri, where she majored in English and French. She earned a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University.

* Ann Zulawski was the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor of History and Latin American Studies. Professor Zulawski is the author of Unequal Cures: Public Health and Political Change in Bolivia, 1900-1950 (Duke University Press, 2007) and They Eat from Their Labor: Work and Social Change in Colonial Bolivia (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995).