Patricia Herminghouse, the Karl F. and Bertha A. Fuchs Professor Emerita of German Studies at the University of Rochester, has been named the recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Lifetime Achievement Award.
The award was established in 1997 by the Anthony Center for Women's Leadership at the University. It is presented annually to a University of Rochester alumna, trustee, faculty member, or administrator who has demonstrated strong leadership qualities, personal as well as professional success, and has served as a role model for other women. Herminghouse will receive the award at the annual Susan B. Anthony Legacy Dinner on Thursday, Feb. 6.
Herminghouse came to the University in 1983 as a full professor and chair of what was then named the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics. During her six-year tenure, she oversaw curricular innovations and, through her work on various committees, was instrumental in recruiting and promoting women and feminist scholars to faculty positions. She was a founding member of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Studies.
Outside of the University, Herminghouse had a central role in the founding of Women in German, an organization known internationally for promoting feminist scholarship of German literature and culture, and has been co-editor of the Women in German Yearbook since 1994. She is the editor of Frauen im Mittelpunkt: An Anthology of Contemporary German Women Writers, a textbook that is still in wide use, and is the editor or co-editor of numerous other scholarly books.
Though retired from a full-time teaching load, Herminghouse maintains many professional activities. She is president of the German Studies Association and has served on the editorial boards of almost a dozen journals, as well as of the Encyclopedia of Modern German History and the Encyclopedia of Contemporary German Culture. She continues to consult and lecture widely across the United States and abroad and will be keynote speaker at the founding conference of the German Studies Association of Australia this summer.
Before coming to the University of Rochester, Herminghouse taught at Washington University and at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics and in modern languages from Knox College and her master's and doctoral degrees in German from Washington University.