Nancy F. Cott, the Stanley Woodward Professor of History and American Studies, has been appointed as this year's William Clyde DeVane Professor, according to an announcement by President Richard C. Levin. As the DeVane Professor, Ms. Cott will present the spring DeVane Lecture series on the topic "Marriage: Thought, Practice, and Politics Over Two Centuries in the United States."
Professor Cott is a noted scholar of the history of women and the family, as well as of the social and intellectual history of the United States. An invitation to deliver the DeVane Lectures is considered by faculty members to be a major tribute. The William Clyde DeVane professorship was established in 1969 with a grant from the Old Dominion Foundation; it honors the former dean of Yale College by addressing his concern that undergraduate education not become excessively narrow and departmentalized. Professor Cotts' lectures, which are open free to the public, are also cross-listed as a course by the history and American studies departments. Students enrolled in the course receive academic credit.
The DeVane Lectures will survey "the changing views and meanings of marriage and its perceived alternatives in the United States from the 1770s to the 1970s," says the historian in her course description in the Yale College Programs of Study bulletin. Lecture topics -- which will span family history, intellectual history and political history -- will include the analogy between slavery and marriage as domestic institutions, the relation between the War for Independence and authorization of divorce, forms of marriage protest in utopian communities and in the "free love" movement, and the invention of modern "companionate" marriage, Professor Cott says.
A member of the Yale faculty since 1975, Professor Cott is considered a foremost scholar in the field of women's history and gender relations in the United States. Her books include "Root of Bitterness: Documents of the Social History of American Women," "The Bonds of Womanhood: 'Woman's Sphere' in New England, 1780- 1835," "The Grounding of Modern Feminism" and "A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters." Through these works and her many articles, Professor Cott is credited with defining the field of women's history. Her most recent research has focused on the history of marriage as a public institution.
Professor Cott played a major role in the effort to establish a women's studies major at Yale, and she served 1980-87 as chair of the women's studies program, with which she continues to be affiliated. Named the Stanley Woodward Professor in 1990, Professor Cott has received grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations and from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a five-time recipient of the A. Whitney Griswold grant from Yale, among other honors. A popular lecturer on university campuses and at academic conferences, she currently serves as the general editor for an 11-volume series of books on U.S. women's history for junior high- and high-school students.
The DeVane Lectures will begin in January and will be offered on Wednesday afternoons. More information on the lecture series will appear in a future issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.