Ellen Kay Trimberger, professor emerita of sociology at Sonoma State University in California, passed away on October 23. She was 85 years old.
After earning her Ph.D in sociology from the University of Chicago, Dr. Trimberger taught at several educational institutions, including Columbia University; Barnard College; the City University of New York; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and San Jose State University. In 1974, Dr. Trimberger began her tenure at what was then Sonoma State College. Six years after arriving at Sonoma State, she was appointed coordinator of the newly established women’s studies program – a role she held for the next 20 years. She also served as an affiliated scholar with the Institute for the Study of Social Issues at the University of California, Berkeley.
Initially, Dr. Trimberger’s scholarship centered on imperialism, leading to her first book, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru (Transaction Publishers, 1978). As her career progressed, she transitioned her primary research areas to focus on feminism and gender studies, resulting in her monograph, The New Single Woman (Beacon Press, 2005). Later in life, Dr. Trimberger wrote, Creole Son: An Adoptive Mother Untangles Nature & Nurture (Louisiana State University Press, 2020), a memoir chronicling her experience as a single mother of an adopted biracial son.