In Memoriam--Elizabeth Fox Genovese 1941 - 2007

I have just learned with sadness that Elizabeth Fox-Genovese died on January 2 of this year. A historian and wife to the historian Eugene Genovese, she made her name working with her husband on the historical issues of slavery. Originally on the left, she and her husband converted to Catholicism. Ms. Genovese became a regular contributor to First Things and contributed greatly to women's historical studies. In her older years, as part of the journey of she and her husband out of the left, this eminent scholar became a vocal opponent of feminism as a force destructive to both women and their families. She and her husband were not blessed with children but she was a strong advocate of the protection of children through the protection of their families. She is the author of Women and the Future of the Family (2000), Feminism is Not the Story of My Life: How the Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch With the Real Concerns of Women (1996), Feminism Without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism (1991), and Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (1988), which received the C. Hugh Holman Prize of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature, the Julia Cherry Spruill Prize of the Southern Association of Women Historians, and was named an outstanding book of the year by the Augustus Meyer Foundation for the Study of Human Rights. In September 2003 Dr. Fox-Genovese received the Cardinal Wright Award from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. The award is given annually to a Catholic adjudged to have done an outstanding service for the Church. Go to http://www.wf-f.org/04-3-Feminism.html to read her Michelmas speech, "Feminism and the Unraveling of the Social Bond," go to
http://www.wf-f.org/02-4-WhatCanWeHopetoAccomp.html for an article, "What Can We Hope to Accomplish? The Prospects for Evangelization in Dangerous Times," and see
http://www.wf-f.org/03-2-Laity.html for her article, "Faith, Fashion, and the Vocation of the Laity in a Secular, Postmodern World." She was an editorial board member of the Catholic magazine, Women for Faith and Family, and an advisor to First Things. Throughout her life, Mrs. Genovese was a courageous woman who life was transformed by becoming a Catholic in er never-ending quest for truth.