Jill Ker Conway

Jill Ker Conway AC (born October 9, 1934 in Hillston , New South Wales , † June 1, 2018 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an Australian - American historian and writer . She was the first female president of Smith College in Northampton , Massachusetts, the largest women's college in the United States , from 1975 to 1985 .

biography

Conway was born in Hillston in the Australian outback in 1934 . Together with her two brothers, Conway grew up on a piece of land called Coorain ( aboriginal for "windy place"). Conway was tutored by her mother and a tutor. When Conway was eleven, her father died in an accident. She moved to Sydney with her family three years later and Jill attended Abbotsleigh School for Girls in Wahroonga, a suburb of Sydney. Upon graduation, Conway enrolled at the University of Sydney, studying English and history through to graduation in 1958.

In 1960 Conway moved to the United States, where she accepted a position at Harvard University . She assisted the Canadian professor of British history John J. Conway, whom she later married. The marriage lasted until John Conway's death in 1995.

1969 Conway was awarded the title Doctor of Philosophy at Harvard University . From 1964 to 1975 she taught at the University of Toronto , where she was vice president from 1973 to 1975. In 1975, Conway became the first female president of Smith College , Northampton. Conway held this post until 1985. Since 1985 Conway has been a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

In her work, Conway mainly dealt with the role of feminism in American history, for example in the books The Female Experience in 18th- and 19th-Century America from 1982 and in Women Reformers and American Culture from 1987.

Conway has published three autobiographical books about her life. The first book The Road from Coorain was made into a film for American television in 2002. The main roles were played by Juliet Stevenson , Richard Roxburgh and Katherine Slattery . Directed by Brendan Maher .

In 1991 Conway was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . For 2012 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal .

Publications

Autobiographies

• 1989: The Road from Coorain
• 1994: True North
• 2001: A Woman's Education

Specialist literature

• 1972: Women Reformers and American Culture: 1870-1930
• 1982: The Female Experience in 18th- and 19th-Century America
• 1987: Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare? Nineteenth Century Feminist Ideas About Equality
• 1989: Learning about Women (with Susan Bourque and Joan Scott)
• 1992: Autobiographies of American Women: An Anthology
• 1997: Modern Feminism: An Intellectual History
• 1999: In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States
• 2000: Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment
• 2001: Women on Power: Leadership Redefined

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Short biography on The Harvard Lamplighter , April 1999, accessed July 17, 2009.
2. ↑ The Road from Coorain in the Internet Movie Database (English), accessed on July 17 of 2009.