E F-G, RIP
New York Times - January 7, 2007
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Historian, Is Dead at 65 By MARGALIT FOX
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, a noted historian and women’s studies scholar
who roiled both disciplines with her transition from Marxist-inclined
feminist to conservative public intellectual, died on Tuesday in
Atlanta. She was 65 and had lived in Atlanta for many years.
Ms. Fox-Genovese’s husband, the historian Eugene D. Genovese,
confirmed the death, citing no specific cause. He said that his wife
had lived with multiple sclerosis for the last 15 years and that her
health had declined after she underwent major surgery in October.
At her death, Ms. Fox-Genovese was the Eléonore Raoul professor of
the humanities at Emory University. In 1986, she founded the
university’s Institute for Women’s Studies and was its director until
1991.
Originally trained as a historian of 18th-century France, Ms. Fox-
Genovese became known for her studies of women in the antebellum
South, among them “Within the Plantation Household: Black and White
Women of the Old South” (University of North Carolina, 1988) and “To
Be Worthy of God’s Favor: Southern Women’s Defense and Critique of
Slavery” (Gettysburg College, 1993).
With her husband, a well-known historian of American slavery, Ms. Fox-
Genovese wrote “The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in
the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview” (Cambridge University),
published in 2005.
Ms. Fox-Genovese was also known for two books about feminism that
charted her evolving stance toward the movement. In the first,
“Feminism Without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism” (University
of North Carolina, 1991), she took the women’s movement to task for
reflecting — too narrowly, she felt — the concerns of middle-class
white women.
Reviewing Ms. Fox-Genovese’s book in The New York Times Book Review,
Rosemary L. Bray called it “insightful and important,” adding: “It’s
possible that the tough questions she asks — about abortion,
pornography and the ubiquitous canon wars — might finally inspire the
thoughtful debate and civilized discourse we’ve been missing.”
Writing in the Book Review in 1996, Mary Gordon had this to say about
Ms. Fox-Genovese’s next book on the subject, “Feminism Is Not the
Story of My Life: How Today’s Feminist Elite Has Lost Touch With the
Real Concerns of Women” (Nan A. Talese):
“When we last left Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, at the end of ‘Feminism
Without Illusions,’ she was deploring people who ‘find it easy to
blame feminism for some of the most disturbing aspects of modern
life: divorce, latchkey children, teenage alcoholism, domestic
violence, the sexual abuse of children.’ Five years later, it seems
she has become one of the people she warned us about.”
Ms. Fox-Genovese, who in her early work supported abortion, though
with reservations, would in later years equate it with murder. She
would also argue publicly that the women’s movement had been
disastrous, and extol the virtues of traditional marriage and family.
In interviews and in her writings, Ms. Fox-Genovese ascribed her
political transformation in part to her growing embrace of religion.
Reared in a household of secular intellectuals, she converted to
Roman Catholicism in 1995.
Elizabeth Ann Fox, known as Betsey, was born in Boston on May 28,
1941; her father, Edward Whiting Fox, was a prominent historian who
served in the State Department in the Truman administration. She
earned a bachelor’s degree in history and French from Bryn Mawr in
1963; a master’s in history from Harvard in 1966; and a Ph.D. in
history, also from Harvard, in 1974.
In 1969, she married Mr. Genovese, with whom she founded the journal
Marxist Perspectives in the late 1970’s. Mr. Genovese also moved
rightward over the years, his work appearing increasingly in
conservative publications. Before joining the Emory faculty in 1986,
Ms. Fox-Genovese taught at the University of Rochester and the State
University of New York at Binghamton.
Besides her husband, Ms. Fox-Genovese is survived by a brother,
Edward Whiting Fox Jr., of Indianapolis; and a sister, Rebecca
MacMillan Fox, of Miami.
In 1993, in what must have seemed an exquisite irony, Ms. Fox-
Genovese, along with Emory University, was named in a highly
publicized suit alleging sexual discrimination and harassment. The
suit was filed by L. Virginia Gould, a former graduate student of Ms.
Fox-Genovese’s who was later associate director of the Institute for
Women’s Studies.
Ms. Gould charged that Ms. Fox-Genovese harassed her psychologically
and required her to perform personal services, like giving parties,
that would not have been asked of a male subordinate. In 1996, the
university settled the suit out of court for an undisclosed sum.
Ms. Fox-Genovese’s other books include “The Origins of Physiocracy:
Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century
France” (Cornell University, 1976), and, with her husband, “Fruits of
Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and
Expansion of Capitalism” (Oxford University, 1983).
In 2003, President Bush awarded her the National Humanities Medal.