Women's Studies Offers Post To Briton

Making 1986 perhaps the most significant year for Harvard's Women's Studies Program, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has offered a British scholar a lifetime joint appointment in History and Women's Studies.

Two months after the Committee on Women's Studies recommended that the field be offered to undergraduates as a formal concentration, Dean A. Michael Spence said late last week that he offered the tenured post to Olwen Hufton, a professor at the University of Reading in Reading, England.

If Hufton accepts the offer, she would be the first tenured faculty member with an appointment in Women's Studies.

Concentration

Harvard has long resisted efforts by some faculty members to establish a undergraduate concentration or a faculty appointment to study women's issues. Opponents have argued that such a field is too broad and is inseparable from history, literature and other academic areas.

But supporters of Women's Studies, an interdisciplinary field examining women's role and effect on history and other disciplines, believe that by the end of this fall they may boost both a tenured faculty member and a concentration. Hundreds of schools in the country already have such offerings.

Hufton Expected

Hufton could not be reached for comment in England and it could not be determined yesterday if she plans to accept Harvard's offer. If she decides to come to Cambridge, Hufton would head the Committee on Women's Studies, which monitors women's courses throughout the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and would oversee an all-honors Women's Studies major if it is approved, said Assistant Professor of History Catherine Clinton '73, a committee member.

Hufton would begin her tenure in the fall term of the 1987-88 academic year, Clinton said.

Clinton said she thought Hufton would decide to come to Harvard. "She's spoken very warmly about the Women's Studies Committee," she added.

But if Hufton turns Harvard down, then therewill still be enough time for the plannedconcentration to find another scholar to fill thepost for 1987-88, she said.

Clinton described Hufton, who has been avisiting professor at Stanford University and theUniversity of California at Berkeley, as "aleading figure in 18th century European history,and well known for her work on women."

"We're all eagerly anticipating her acceptingthe appointment. In the History Department,everyone's ecstatic," Clinton said.

"She's a first-class scholar with some realleadership skills. She'll be great," said WinthropProfessor of History Stephan A. Thernstrom, amember of the Women's Studies Committee.

"It's important [for Women's Studies atHarvard] to get a well known, distinguishedscholar. It will show the wider Universitycommunity that Women's Studies has more than comeof age," Clinton said.

As well as demonstrating the legitimacy of thediscipline to people outside Women's Studies,Hufton could also help shape the program, whichhas lacked an overall architecture, she said.

Clinton said that if Hufton comes, she couldhelp Women's Studies by "demonstrating that itwill be a rigorous intellectual program, like theother special programs," such as Social Studiesand History and Literature.

In addition, Hufton could teach Core Curriculumclasses and the introductory course in the plannedWomen's Studies concentration, Clinton said.

Hufton graduated from the University of Londonin 1959, and received a post-graduate degree fromthat school two years later before becoming alecturer at the University of Leicester. She hasheld more than a dozen visiting professorships atschools including Cambridge University and theUniversity of Melbourne, in Australia