Charting a New Course for Harvard's Women Faculty

Alice Hamilton, Harvard's first woman professor, did not have it so easy during her 16-year tenure here: the University refused to give Hamilton, an assistant professor of medicine, free football tickets, admission to the Faculty Club and the benefit of a first name--she was referred to officially as only "A. Hamilton," so as not to divulge her sexual identity.

Fifty-one years after Hamilton retired, Harvard has established its first concentration devoted solely to the study of women, and it went across the Atlantic to ask an expert on 18th century crime, riots and poverty to head the field.

The chairman of the newly created Women's Studies Program, British scholar Olwen Hufton, is visiting Harvard this week to lay the groundwork for the fledgling concentration and to prepare the way for her move next year from Reading, England.

Offered tenure this summer, Hufton accepted a joint appointment as chairman of the program and a professor of history early this semester.

Flying back to England this Monday, Hufton will have spent her first days in Cambridge on a whirlwind tour of meetings while also trying to make time to find an apartment and pick a school for her youngest daughter, Claire, who is 10.

"I am still trying to adjust to the jet lag," Hufton says. But Hufton believes the transition to Cambridge will not be a difficult one.

"New England is the easiest place in the States for the British to settle in because there are many topographical similarities and one is conscious of a common heritage," she says. "And I'll be learning the Harvard ropes, won't I," she adds.

Hufton is looking forward to leading the Women's Studies program on next year's maiden voyage.

"I think our first steps have to be rather slow, since we're starting from such a small position," Hufton says.

The program's first objectives will be to concentrate on the "foundations course," Women's Studies 10, and to encourage departments to offer more courses which can be cross-listed for concentration credit, Hufton says.

"We want to make the departments throughout the Faculty of Arts and Sciences aware of the importance of women's studies and to encourage them to make positive contributions," Hufton says. "But one can't force the hands of the departments, one can only encourage."

As planned, Women's Studies 10 will be an introductory course on women's studies with a special sophomore tutorial section. The course will use interdisciplinary skills and materials to examine gender issues and the position of women in society.

Concentrators in Women's Studies will be able to choose 32 courses offered by more than 10 traditional departments.

"The development in the future is to make sure that Harvard has the most vast and widest selection available and that is what will establish Harvard's preeminence in the field," Hufton says.

Born on June 2, 1938 at Oldham, Lancashire in Great Britain, Olwen Hufton has spent all of her life learning and teaching in England.

Awarded an honors degree in history from the University of London in 1959, Hufton remained at the university to pursue postgraduate studies on French history in the 18th century.

Hufton published her first book, "The Bayeux in the Late 18th Century," in 1967, five years after receiving her Ph.D. in history. She has written two other books, one of which, "The Poor of Eighteenth Century France," won the presitigous Wolfson Award in 1975. The Wolfson Award is the only outstanding history award given annually in England, Hufton said.

She is finishing a fourth book, "Women in Early Modern Europe," which will be published at the end of the year by Knopf publishers.

"The book is about women and the family, crime, prostitution, and many other areas," Hufton said about the upcoming 300-plus page work.

Hufton will leave "a personal chair" at England's University of Reading where she taught courses on early modern European history, the history of women, and the history of the 18th century, she said.

A personal chair is a position more presitigious than a tenured one because it only endows the salary of a specific faculty member, Hufton said. "When I leave, the chair will disappear."