Gertrude Reif Hughes Explained

Gertrude Reif Hughes
Birth Name:Geertrui Bernadette Reif
Birth Date:April 22, 1936
Birth Place:Bergen, The Netherlands
Death Date:January 4, 2022
Death Place:Waterford, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation:College professor

Gertrude Reif Hughes (April 22, 1936 – January 4, 2022) was an American college professor. She taught English at Wesleyan University from 1976 to 2006, and was one of the founders of the school's women's studies program. She was also a noted scholar of anthroposophy.

Early life and education

Geertrui (Gertrude) Bernadette Reif was born in Bergen, the Netherlands,[1] one of the three daughters of Paul Reif and Maria Reif. She and her family emigrated to the United States in 1940. She was raised in New York City.[2] She graduated from the George School, and from Mount Holyoke College in 1958. She earned two master's degrees at Wesleyan University, and completed doctoral studies at Yale University in 1976, with a dissertation directed by Harold Bloom.[3]

Career

Hughes taught high school English after college. She was a member of the English department faculty at Wesleyan University for thirty years, from 1976 until she retired with full professor status in 2006.[4] She was one of the founders, and chair, of the women's studies program at Wesleyan. She was also on the faculty of the Sunbridge Institute. In addition to her academic pursuits, Hughes was a serious student of anthroposophy. She chaired the board of the Anthroposophic Press, was president of the Rudolf Steiner summer institute,[5] and published on Rudolf Steiner's philosophy.[6] In 2012 she gave an oral history interview for the Wesleyan Oral History Project.[7]

Publications

Personal life

Gertrude Reif married Robert Gerald Hughes in 1958. They had four children and divorced in 1981. Her son Ken died in 2014. She died in Waterford, Connecticut, in 2022, at the age of 81, after several years of Alzheimer's disease.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Akte - CBGCentrum voor familiegeschiedenis . 2023-01-03 . WieWasWie.
  2. News: 1957-11-12 . Miss Geertrui Reif Prospective Bride . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-01-03 . 0362-4331.
  3. Web site: January 8, 2022 . Gertrude Hughes Obituary . 2023-01-03 . The Day, via Legacy.com.
  4. Web site: January 10, 2022 . Hughes Remembered for Teaching English, Women's Studies Courses for 30 Years . 2023-01-03 . The Wesleyan Connection . en-US.
  5. Web site: Gertrude Reif Hughes . 2023-01-03 . Steiner Books.
  6. Book: Hughes, Gertrude Reif . More radiant than the sun : a handbook for working with Steiner's meditations and exercises . 2013 . 978-1-62148-035-8 . Great Barrington, Massachusetts . 838193117.
  7. Web site: March 30, 2012 . Oral history interview with Gertrude Reif Hughes [session 1] ]. 2023-01-03 . Wesleyan University Digital Collections.
  8. Book: Hughes, Gertrude Reif . Emerson's demanding optimism . 1984 . Louisiana State University Press . 0-8071-1180-5 . Baton Rouge . 10696818.
  9. Hughes, Gertrude Reif. "Imagining the Existence of Something Uncreated: Elements of Emerson in Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language." Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-Visions, 1951–1981 (1984): 140-62.
  10. Hughes . Gertrude Reif . 1986 . Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique of Women's Work . Legacy . 3 . 1 . 17–28 . 25678952 . 0748-4321 . JStor.
  11. Hughes . Gertrude Reif . 1990 . Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry . American Quarterly . 42 . 3 . 375–401 . 10.2307/2712940 . 2712940 . 0003-0678.
  12. Web site: Hughes . Gertrude Reif . 2012 . McDermott . Robert A. . Rudolf Steiner's activist epistemology and its relation to feminist thought in America . 2023-01-03 . American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Feminism . Lindisfarne Books . en.

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