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Joanne S. Frye
Born (1944-11-06) November 6, 1944 (age 80)
South Bend, Indiana
Occupation(s)Professor of English and Women's Studies
Years active1976-2009
Academic background
EducationPhD
Alma materIndiana University Bloomington
Academic work
DisciplineEnglish Literature, Women's Studies
InstitutionsCollege of Wooster
Notable worksLiving Stories, Telling Lives and Biting the Moon
Websitewww.joannefrye.com

Joanne Schultz Frye (November 6, 1944 – July 22, 2024) was a Professor Emerita of English and Women's Studies at the College of Wooster.[1][2][3] Frye is known for her feminist literary criticism and interdisciplinary inquiry into motherhood. She specialized in research on fiction by and about women, such as the work of Virginia Woolf, Tillie Olsen, and Jane Lazarre.

Frye's first book, Living Stories, Telling Lives: Women and the Novel in Contemporary Experience,[4] was featured in Betsy Draine's 1989 review essay, "Refusing the Wisdom of Solomon: Some Recent Feminist Literary Theory,"[5] and in Ellen Cronan Rose's 1993 essay "American feminist criticism of contemporary women's fiction,"[6] both in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Draine cites Frye's chapter on "Feminist Poetics" as an affirmation of "the explanatory possibilities of narrative, to develop new paradigms through which we can see our own experience" and notes the book's emphasis on "the subversive first-person female" to move beyond the language of patriarchy.[7] In the preface, Frye claims "a dual commitment: to the importance of affirming women's own perspective on female experience and to the power of literature in shaping our culture awareness."[8] Rose notes this commitment to literature as "stimulus to personal and social change."[9]

Frye has also been celebrated for her 2012 memoir, Biting the Moon: A Memoir of Feminism and Motherhood, in which she continues the concerns of her critical work and her past, which Frye situates in literary and cultural context.[10]

Frye married Ronald Tebbe in 1989. Her two daughters are teachers and writers; each is the mother of two sons.[10]

Early life and career

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Frye was born in South Bend, Indiana, to parents of Mennonite heritage.[10][11][self-published source] She graduated from John Adams High School in South Bend, Indiana. She attended Bluffton College in Ohio, studied modernist English literature in graduate school at Indiana University Bloomington. Frye completed her dissertation on Virginia Woolf at Indiana University in 1974.[12]

In 1968, at age 23, a second-year doctoral student in English literature, Frye married Lawrence O. Frye, a German professor ten years her senior.[10] While completing her dissertation, she lived on a farm and gave birth to two daughters, in 1971 and 1975.[10] Following their divorce in 1976, Frye became a single mother to her two daughters. She writes in detail about her life in her memoir, Biting at the Moon: A Memoir of Feminism and Motherhood.[10] Reviewer Marina DelVecchio describes Frye's memoir as a story that "introduces us to a woman who acts with feminist conviction before she even calls herself a feminist—before she establishes a successful Women's Studies program her college."[13]

Frye was hired into the English Department at the College of Wooster in 1976, where she taught courses in writing and literature, including single author courses on Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and Charlotte Brontë; she chaired the English Department from 1991 to 1994.[10] In 1978, Frye led the Committee on the Status of Women in formalizing the Women's Studies Program as a minor.[12] In 1989, she led the program committee to faculty approval of a Women's Studies major. Both proposals were collaborative efforts, building on the work of earlier faculty, including history Professor James Turner.[10]

Frye served as chair of the Women's Studies Program unofficially from 1978 to 1982 and again in 1983-84, and eventually as the first "official" chair of the Program from 1985 to 1989.[12] In 2009, Frye retired from the College of Wooster, where she taught both English and Women's Studies for thirty-three years.[1][2]

Selected bibliography

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  • Living Stories, Telling Lives: Women and the Novel in Contemporary Experience, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 0472100734, 1986
  • Tillie Olsen: A Study of the Short Fiction, Twayne Publishers, ISBN 0805708634, 1995
  • Biting the Moon: A Memoir of Feminism and Motherhood, Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0815609698, 2012

References

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  1. ^ a b "Professors Emeriti | Department of English | The College of Wooster". www.wooster.edu. Retrieved 2017-03-16.
  2. ^ a b "Professors Emeriti | Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program | College of Wooster".
  3. ^ "Joanne S. Frye" (obituary), The Daily Record online, Wooster, Ohio, July 23, 2024. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
  4. ^ Frye, Joanne S. (1986). Living stories, telling lives : women and the novel in contemporary experience. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0472100736. OCLC 263620615.
  5. ^ Draine, Betsy (1989). "Refusing the Wisdom of Solomon: Some Recent Feminist Literary Theory". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 15 (1): 144–170. doi:10.1086/494568. JSTOR 3174710.
  6. ^ Rose, Ellen Cronan (1993). "American feminist criticism of contemporary women's fiction". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 18 (2): 346–376. doi:10.1086/494796.
  7. ^ Draine, Betsy (1989). "Refusing the Wisdom of Solomon: Some Recent Feminist Literary Theory". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 15 (1): 162–63. doi:10.1086/494568. JSTOR 3174710.
  8. ^ Frye, Joanne (1986). Living Stories, Telling Lives: Women and the Novel in Contemporary Experience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. vi. ISBN 978-0472080656.
  9. ^ Rose, Ellen Cronan (1993). "American Feminist Criticism of Contemporary Women's Fiction". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 18 (2): 365.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Frye, Joanne S. (2012-01-01). Biting the moon : a memoir of feminism and motherhood. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0815609698. OCLC 808350116.
  11. ^ "Joanne S. Frye | Personal Webpage". 2015.
  12. ^ a b c "Interview with Joanne Frye by Alex Kauffman". June 17, 2016. Archived from the original on March 17, 2017. Retrieved March 16, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  13. ^ DelVecchio, Marina (February 29, 2012). "Motherhood, Feminism, and Biting the Moon". Her Circle: a magazine of women's creative arts and activism.
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