The Insider

A Life of Virginia C. Gildersleeve

The Insider
Nancy Woloch
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Paperback
h229 x 152mm - 328pg
8 Mar 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780231204255
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Virginia C. Gildersleeve was the most influential dean of Barnard College, which she led from 1911 to 1947. An organizer of the Seven College Conference, or "Seven Sisters," she defended women' s intellectual abilities and the value of the liberal arts. She also amassed a strong set of foreign policy credentials and, at the peak of her prominence in 1945, served as the sole woman member of the U. S. delegation to the drafting of the United Nations Charter. But her accomplishments are undercut by other factors: she had a reputation for bias against Jewish applicants for admission to Barnard and early in the 1930s voiced an indulgent view of the Nazi regime. In this biography, historian Nancy Woloch explores Gildersleeve' s complicated career in academia and public life. At once a privileged insider, prone to elitism and insularity, and a perpetual outsider to the sexist establishment in whose ranks she sought to ascend, Gildersleeve stands out as richly contradictory. The book examines her initiatives in higher education, her savvy administration, her strategies for gaining influence in academic life, the ways that she acquired and deployed expertise, and her drive to take part in the world of foreign affairs. Woloch draws out her ambivalent stance in the women' s movement, concerned with women' s status but opposed to demands for equal rights. Tracing resonant themes of ambition, competition, and rivalry, The Insider masterfully weaves Gildersleeve' s life into the histories of education, international relations, and feminism.
Nancy Woloch' s deeply researched, beautifully written biography of Virginia Gildersleeve reveals a complicated figure: a fighter for equal rights who greatly expanded opportunities for educated women at home and abroad, but also a defender of her class and tribe who repeatedly compromised her egalitarian ideals. -- Rosalind Rosenberg, author of Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray I liked this book as soon as I read the introduction. Its strong, confident tone and willingness to confront head on the challenges of writing about Virginia Gildersleeve' s life and place in history demonstrated one of the main things I look for in a biography: a good match between biographer and subject. -- Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote Nancy Woloch has written as good a biography of an American academic leader as we have. She offers a cool-handed analysis of how Virginia Gildersleeve managed her relations with Columbia, with her own board of trustees, and with her faculty for more than thirty-six years. She handles Gildersleeve' s private life with sensitivity and addresses her ideological blind spots with candor. In all, a serious contribution to the history of higher education and to women' s history. -- Robert A. McCaughey, author of A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard In this judicious biography, Gildersleeve emerges as a complicated figure. A resilient administrator, internationalist, and promoter of women' s higher education, she also restricted Barnard' s admission of Jews and Blacks and was briefly pro-Nazi. By deftly treating her subject' s intimate relationships with two women, Woloch brings Gildersleeve' s private life into focus. -- Helen L. Horowitz, author of Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women' s Colleges from Their Nineteenth Century Beginnings to the 1930s
Nancy Woloch is a research scholar in the Department of History at Barnard College. Her books include the award-winning A Class by Herself: Protective Laws for Women Workers, 1890s-1990s (2015) and Women and the American Experience (fifth edition, 2011).
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780231204255
Published: 8 Mar 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 229mm
Width: 152mm
Pages: 328

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