Ann J. Lane, the first director of the women’s studies program at the University of Virginia, died late last month. She was 81 years old.
A native of Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Lane earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Brooklyn College. She held a master’s degree in sociology from New York University and a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University.
After earning her doctorate in 1968, Professor Lane joined the faculty at Douglass College of Rutgers University in New Jersey. In 1971, she was hired to the faculty at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York. From 1984 to 1990, Dr. Lane served on the faculty at Colgate University. In 1990, she became the director of the new women’s studies program at the University of Virginia. She also was a professor of history at the university.
Dr. Lane stepped down as director of the women’s studies program in 2003 but continued to teach at the University of Virginia until 2009. She was the author of the 1971 book The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction and the editor of The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader (1980).