University of New England

History Professor Elizabeth
De Wolfe named first
Ludcke Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences
 
PORTLAND, Maine - Elizabeth De Wolfe, Ph.D., professor of history, chair of University of New England’s History Department and also co-director of UNE’s Women’s Studies program, has been named the Ludcke Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences for 2008-2009. 
 
De Wolfe teaches courses in women’s history, communal societies, and American culture. 

She earned her Ph.D. in American and New England studies from Boston University in 1996, an M.A. in anthropology from the State University of New York/Albany in 1985 and a B.A. in social science from Colgate University in 1983.  In 2004, De Wolfe received the University of New England’s highest honor, the Kenneally Cup, in recognition of her excellence in teaching and service to the University of New England. 


The Ludcke Chair
In 2004, Eleanor DeWolfe Ludcke, 1926 Westbrook College alumna, bequeathed to Westbrook College an endowed professorship. At the time the chair was awarded, it came with no release time or stipend. Elizabeth De Wolfe, who is not related to Eleanor Ludcke,  was named the first chair holder and has held the chair since spring 2004.  Guidelines have now been established effective with the 2008-2009 Ludcke Chair. The Ludcke Chair has two components: a one-year tenure as chair holder, allowing many faculty members in the UNE College of Arts and Science to be recognized for their high achievement as a teacher/scholar, and a stipend for the chair holder to use in support of his or her scholarship.
 
“It is an honor for me to carry on the tradition of teaching at Westbrook College, especially since I was a Westbrook College faculty member at the time of the merger of Westbrook College with UNE in 1996," De Wolfe said.  "As a scholar of women’s history, there is a very meaningful opportunity for me to make use of this generous bequest by a Westbrook College alumnae to teach this generation of Westbrook students.  As the chair, I will teach a course on the Westbrook College Campus that will focus on women in college from 1830 to 1930.  We are going to use materials from the Westbrook College archives as a source of information and readings.  We will look at American women’s history through the lens of change in women’s education.”  

De Wolfe will also continue her research on Maine factory girl fiction. 
 
De Wolfe
De Wolfe is the author of Shaking the Faith: Women, Family, and Mary Marshall Dyer’s Anti-Shaker Campaign, 1815-1867 (2002), which was awarded the Communal Studies Association’s “Outstanding Book Award” for 2003.  She is also co-editor of Such News of the Land: U.S. Women Nature Writers (2001) and The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories published in 2007, which recently received awards in the True Crime category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards and in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year competition.  The University of New England Department of History collaborated with the Dyer Library/Saco Museum to create a fascinating student-designed exhibition titled “Mary Bean: The Factory Girl or the Victim of Seduction.”
 
(Press release posted June 5, 2008)