Annette Kolodny, an internationally prominent feminist scholar who served as dean of the UA’s College of Humanities from 1988 to 1993, has died. She was 78.

 

Kolodny was “a pioneer in the field of ecofeminism,” according to The New York Times, who “connected the ravaging of the land, particularly in the opening of the American West, and the ravaging of women.”

 

Kolodny, already an internationally influential and prize-winning scholar who had held faculty positions at Yale University, the University of British Columbia, the University of New Hampshire, the University of Maryland, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, was recruited to the University of Arizona to be the dean of the College of Humanities, the first woman to be named an academic dean outside the College of Nursing.

 

Born in New York City on Aug. 21, 1941, Kolodny attended Brooklyn College, graduating in 1962 magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and with honors in English. She subsequently worked as an associate to the editor of the International Editions of Newsweek Magazine. After returning to academia in 1963, she received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969.

 

Kolodny’s significant contributions to the UA are celebrated at the UA Women’s Plaza of Honor. Submitted by the late Laurel L. Wilkening, a renowned planetary scientist who served the University of Arizona in several academic leadership roles, Kolodny is honored as “An internationally influential and prize-winning scholar best known for her innovative work in the areas of feminist literary theory, ecocriticism, frontier studies, and early American literature.”

 

As dean, Kolodny introduced a host of policy innovations designed to enhance the success of women and minority staff, students and faculty. She facilitated the development of new promotion and tenure guidelines, more democratic governance procedures, family-friendly policies, the increased hiring of women and minority faculty members, improved financial support for graduate students, and she introduced a "buddy system" for faculty and graduate students alike.

 

After stepping down as Dean, Kolodny was named College of Humanities Professor of American Literature and Culture, and she continued to teach in the graduate program in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies until her retirement from the university in July 2007. She was then named Professor Emerita.

 

“Annette Kolodny was an innovator, both as a scholar and an administrator. Her groundbreaking interdisciplinary work created a model that has endured for decades,” said College of Humanities Dean Alain-Philippe Durand. “Her tireless efforts to transform the College of Humanities into a more inclusive home for faculty and students alike are a legacy that continues today.”

 

Judith McDaniel, now an adjunct instructor in the UA’s School of Government and Public Policy, knew Kolodny long before either of them came to Arizona. They met in the 1970s, when they were both involved in suing their university departments, Kolodny at the University of New Hampshire and McDaniel at Middlebury College.

 

“What I remember about Annette is how incredibly strong and brave she was in putting herself on the line for her principles,” McDaniel said. “She really, really made a difference to so many women who were still trying to grapple with whether they should be compliant and quiet or protest the treatments that were so unfair.”

 

Later, as a dean, Kolodny was able to put those principles into action herself.

 

“It was always part of who she was and what she believed she should be doing, whether she was leading from being the renegade activist or whether she was leading from the administration,” McDaniel said.

 

The pair became close friends in recent years, but McDaniel remembers her first impression from reading Kolodny’s breakthrough book, “The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters” (1975).

 

“You could never really look at American literature again in quite the same way,” she said. “That book was asking questions that simply hadn’t been asked before in terms of scholarship. Why did the writers of the early American experience feel it was so necessary to portray the wilderness as female, as something to be conquered? It completely opened a different way of thinking about literature and what criticism could do.”

 

Adele Barker, Professor Emerita in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies, says Kolodny was not only a pioneer in feminist literary theory, but she took that theory and applied it to real life.

 

“She was trying to address and redress the power politics of academia, so that women could flourish,” Barker says. “She wanted women to be in positions in the upper echelon of higher education. One of the things that really drove her as a dean was not only bringing more women into academia, but making sure they could be promoted and move into administration and be in decision-making positions.”

 

The contributions Kolodny made to her field were not only in terms of the pioneering work she did in ecofeminism and in her own written work, but also in the number of students she trained.

 

“She was rigorous in her thinking and she trained students to be rigorous in their thinking and they went on and got these marvelous jobs. She trained an entire generation of young people in how to think. They’re all hugely indebted to her,” Barker says. “She was devoted to her work, devoted to her field. She was devoted to the ideas that she wrote about and was devoted to having her students carry them forth.”

 

Edison Cassadore, a faculty member in literature and humanities at Tohono O’odham Community College in Sells, took an independent study with Kolodny while he was working on his doctoral degree.

 

“She really had a hands-on approach to training doctoral students. I knew how to be prepared to be a professor and how to do research in archives. It was a well-rounded preparation,” Cassadore says. “She had a very tenacious drive. That’s what a lot of people admired about her, her will to not only be successful, but to do the highest quality work you can do. That’s what she impressed upon me, to always do your best because your students are relying on you.”

 

Cassadore says Kolodny was an inspiration on developing his dissertation topic, which dealt with the frontier and how Hollywood inherited its representation of Native people.

 

“She’s the one who really made me see how to connect the dots,” he says. “She was the shadow behind everything. I never told her that, but I think I told her how much her training has led to my own success. I’m continuing on what she trained me to do. I’m lucky that I had her as a mentor.”

 

Read more about Kolodny’s many achievements in her obituary. Kolodny is survived by her husband, novelist Daniel Peters. In lieu of flowers, donations in her name can be made to one of the following: the Arthritis Foundation, the National Organization for Women (NOW), Planned Parenthood, or the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL).