First director of Women's Studies dies

Nancy A. Walker, professor of English and the first director of Women's Studies at Vanderbilt University, died Dec. 12, from complications of lung cancer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Walker joined Vanderbilt as director of Women's Studies in the summer of 1989, a post she held for seven years. During that time she served as an associate professor of English and attained full professorship in English in 1992. Her areas of study included American, women's and 19th and 20th century literature, American Studies and American popular culture. The author of more than 10 books on women's literature and women's humor, she regularly contributed to and served as editor for a variety of professional journals. She is survived by her husband, Burt Augst, compliance analyst for Vanderbilt's Opportunity Development Center. A memorial service, which will be open to the public, is scheduled for Jan. 11 at 4 p.m. in the All Faith Chapel at the Divinity School.

Walker

Nancy Walker's arrival at Vanderbilt in 1989 was "a very serious thing," toborrow the subtitle of her 1988 landmark book on women's humor in American literature and culture. Vanderbilt, in the late-'80s, had launched its search for a Women's Studies director whose job it would be to develop a formal program within the College of Arts and Science, essentially to turn a Women's Studies Committee (first chaired on campus by Professor Susan Wiltshire) into a full-fledged Women's Studies Program.

The timing was crucial. Scholarship on women's issues, from literature to reproductive health, was burgeoning in the United States and Europe, with Nancy Walker herself contributing to this effort by recovering women's voices in an American humor tradition readily identified with Mark Twain but not, say, with Phyllis McGinley or Marietta Holly. Recovery of the "lost" women's voices, together with interpretation of their wider literary and cultural significance, had become Nancy Walker's commitment -- indeed, her passion. More than 11 years at Vanderbilt, Nancy was to become the most productive of feminist scholars, lecturing nationally (on one occasion sharing a platform with Art Buchwald), officiating at professional conferences, authoring and editing a dozen books on issues in women's fiction and journalism, from Kate Chopin to Eudora Welty to Rachel Maddox. Her last book examines the ways American women's lives of the '40s and '50s (her own as well) were shaped by such mainstream magazines as Good Housekeeping and The Ladies Home Journal.

Scholarship by itself, however, as Nancy knew, could not provide sufficient academic legitimization and momentum for feminist projects. To get the word out, to encourage feminist scholarship and research, meant creating formal and permanent programs. Vanderbilt's announced search for a founding Director of Women's Studies moved some on our faculty to invite Nancy's application, knowing her "people skills" and prior administrative leadership at Stephens College (where she chaired the Department of Languages and Literature) could make her an ideal match for Vandy. Indeed it did. Nancy Walker's energy, persistence, and ability to work with administrative creativity -- all with good humor and equanimity -- moved our Women's Studies Program rapidly forward with stability and breadth. Susan Wiltshire sums up Nancy Walker's contribution: she "was meticulous as a scholar, careful and caring as a teacher, and generous and humane as a colleague and friend. She had a deep sense of justice -- and a sense of humor too."