Gertrude Reif Hughes
{{short description|American college professor (1936–2022)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Gertrude Reif Hughes
| image = GertrudeReifHughes1957.png
| alt = A smiling white woman with dark hair in a chignon
| caption = Gertrude Reif, from a 1957 engagement announcement in The New York Times
| other_names =
| 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
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
| spouse(s) =
| relatives =
}}
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,{{Cite web |title=Akte – CBG{{!}}Centrum voor familiegeschiedenis |url=https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/44028874 |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=WieWasWie}} 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.{{Cite news |date=1957-11-12 |title=Miss Geertrui Reif Prospective Bride |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1957/11/12/archives/miss-geertrui-reif-prospective-bride.html |access-date=2023-01-03 |issn=0362-4331}} 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.{{Cite web |date=January 8, 2022 |title=Gertrude Hughes Obituary |url=https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/theday/name/gertrude-hughes-obituary?id=32169555 |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=The Day, via Legacy.com}}
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.{{Cite web |date=January 10, 2022 |title=Hughes Remembered for Teaching English, Women's Studies Courses for 30 Years |url=https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2022/01/10/hughes-remembered-for-teaching-english-womens-studies-courses-for-30-years/ |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=The Wesleyan Connection |language=en-US}} 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,{{Cite web |title=Gertrude Reif Hughes |url=https://steinerbooks.presswarehouse.com/browse/author/eaf6fc03-1b57-446b-b0aa-131043e8b660/Gertrude-Reif-Hughes?page=1 |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=Steiner Books}} and published on Rudolf Steiner's philosophy.{{Cite book |last=Hughes |first=Gertrude Reif |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/838193117 |title=More radiant than the sun : a handbook for working with Steiner's meditations and exercises |date=2013 |isbn=978-1-62148-035-8 |location=Great Barrington, Massachusetts |oclc=838193117}} In 2012 she gave an oral history interview for the Wesleyan Oral History Project.{{Cite web |date=March 30, 2012 |title=Oral history interview with Gertrude Reif Hughes [session 1] |url=https://digitalcollections.wesleyan.edu/object/ohp-4 |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=Wesleyan University Digital Collections}}
Publications
- Emerson's Demanding Optimism (1984){{Cite book |last=Hughes |first=Gertrude Reif |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10696818 |title=Emerson's demanding optimism |date=1984 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |isbn=0-8071-1180-5 |location=Baton Rouge |oclc=10696818}}
- ""Imagining the Existence of Something Uncreated: Elements of Emerson in Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language"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.
- "Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique of Women's Work" (1986){{Cite journal |last=Hughes |first=Gertrude Reif |date=1986 |title=Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique of Women's Work |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25678952 |journal=Legacy |volume=3 |issue=1 |pages=17–28 |jstor=25678952 |issn=0748-4321 }}
- "Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry" (1990){{Cite journal |last=Hughes |first=Gertrude Reif |date=1990 |title=Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2712940 |journal=American Quarterly |volume=42 |issue=3 |pages=375–401 |doi=10.2307/2712940 |jstor=2712940 |issn=0003-0678}}
- "Rudolf Steiner's activist epistemology and its relation to feminist thought in America" (2012){{Cite web |last=Hughes |first=Gertrude Reif |date=2012 |editor-last=McDermott |editor-first=Robert A. |title=Rudolf Steiner's activist epistemology and its relation to feminist thought in America |url=https://philpapers.org/rec/hugrsa |access-date=2023-01-03 |website=American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Feminism |publisher=Lindisfarne Books |language=en}}
- More Radiant than the Sun: A Handbook for Working with Steiner's Meditations and Exercises (2013)
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.
References
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Category:Mount Holyoke College alumni
Category:Wesleyan University alumni
Category:Wesleyan University faculty