Gertrude Reif Hughes

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.

Gertrude Reif Hughes
Gertrude Reif, from a 1957 engagement announcement in The New York Times
Born	Geertrui Bernadette Reif April 22, 1936 Bergen, The Netherlands
Died	January 4, 2022 Waterford, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation	College professor

Early life and education

Geertrui (Gertrude) Bernadette Reif was born in Bergen, the Netherlands,^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3]

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.^[4] She was one of the founders, and chair, of the women's studies program at Wesleyan.^[3] 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,^[5] and published on Rudolf Steiner's philosophy.^[6] In 2012 she gave an oral history interview for the Wesleyan Oral History Project.^[7]

Publications

• Emerson's Demanding Optimism (1984)^[8]
• ""Imagining the Existence of Something Uncreated: Elements of Emerson in Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language"^[9]
• "Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique of Women's Work" (1986)^[10]
• "Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry" (1990)^[11]
• "Rudolf Steiner's activist epistemology and its relation to feminist thought in America" (2012)^[12]
• More Radiant than the Sun: A Handbook for Working with Steiner's Meditations and Exercises (2013)^[6]

Personal life

Gertrude Reif married Robert Gerald Hughes in 1958.^[2] 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.^[3][4]

References

1. "Akte - CBG|Centrum voor familiegeschiedenis". WieWasWie. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
2. "Miss Geertrui Reif Prospective Bride". The New York Times. 1957-11-12. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
3. "Gertrude Hughes Obituary". The Day, via Legacy.com. January 8, 2022. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
4. "Hughes Remembered for Teaching English, Women's Studies Courses for 30 Years". The Wesleyan Connection. January 10, 2022. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
5. "Gertrude Reif Hughes". Steiner Books. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
6. Hughes, Gertrude Reif (2013). More radiant than the sun : a handbook for working with Steiner's meditations and exercises. Great Barrington, Massachusetts. ISBN 978-1-62148-035-8. OCLC 838193117.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
7. "Oral history interview with Gertrude Reif Hughes [session 1]". Wesleyan University Digital Collections. March 30, 2012. Retrieved 2023-01-03.
8. Hughes, Gertrude Reif (1984). Emerson's demanding optimism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0-8071-1180-5. OCLC 10696818.
9. 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.
10. Hughes, Gertrude Reif (1986). "Subverting the Cult of Domesticity: Emily Dickinson's Critique of Women's Work". Legacy. 3 (1): 17–28. ISSN 0748-4321. JSTOR 25678952 – via JStor.
11. Hughes, Gertrude Reif (1990). "Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry". American Quarterly. 42 (3): 375–401. doi:10.2307/2712940. ISSN 0003-0678. JSTOR 2712940.
12. Hughes, Gertrude Reif (2012). McDermott, Robert A. (ed.). "Rudolf Steiner's activist epistemology and its relation to feminist thought in America". American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner: Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Whitehead, Feminism. Lindisfarne Books. Retrieved 2023-01-03.