RESUME / CURRICULUM VITA

Deborah A. Symonds

Current Affiliation and mailing address:

Associate Professor and Chair
Department of History
Drake University
Des Moines, IA 50311-4505
515/271-2144

email: deborah.symonds@drake.ed

Undergraduate Education: Bennington College, B.A. 1973,
in English literature, minor in European history.

Graduate Education: Edinburgh University, M.Litt., 1976,
in English Literature. Two-year research degree awarded by thesis: A Study of Structure and Antithesis in Selected Scottish Ballads. Implications of the Scots ballads as a source for history led me to change fields.

Binghamton University, M.A., 1981,
in European and American Women's History; degree by essay examination. Topics included female intellectual traditions, domestic feminism, and English and German industrialization.

Binghamton University, Ph.D., 1985,
in Comparative Women's History; concentration in European Women's and minor fields in American Women's and Modern European History.

Languages: French, Quantification. (SPSS, Newberry Program, Quantitative Methods for Historians).

Dissertation: The Re-Forming Of Women's Work And Culture: Scotland 1750-1830

The dissertation, supervised by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, examined the impact of agricultural capitalism on rural Scots women, using as primary sources a body of Scots traditional ballads sung and transmitted by women, and court records of infanticide trials from 1660-1820.


Books:

Weep Not for Me: Women, Ballads, and Infanticide in Early Modern Scotland, (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).

Articles:

"Reconstructing Rural Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Scotland," Journal of Women's History 10:2 (summer 1998) : 63-84.

"Living in the Scottish Record Office," in Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a New Historical Society, edited by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, for The Historical Society, (New York: Routledge,1999).


Research in Progress:

"Bell and the Nabob" [a chapter in a larger study of individual cases, tentatively called Rob Roy's Sons: Difficult Eighteenth-Century Lives]

A short paper, examining a two year period [1770-71] when the lives of an Indian woman and a prominent Scots official of the East India Company intersected. The Scot, John Johnstone, apparently brought her back from Bengal as "a slave or servant," installed her in one of his new Scottish estates, and within a year found her in court. Bell, the woman in question, was indicted for infanticide, but the case never came to trial. It was handled by the court, which banished Bell to the West Indies, incidentally creating her a slave [indentured for life] in the process.

What I am pursuing here is the extraordinary transformation of the court's power to banish into the power to turn a person of difficult or unknowable identity into a slave. To banish and indenture, for 7 or 14 years, was ordinary -- to "indenture" for life was not. Apparently in 1771 the line between indenture and slavery was rather thin. And the High Court of Scotland discovered that it could take life, not only via the gallows, but on paper, making that life a commodity.


1828: The Transformation of Edinburgh's Shadow Economy
[under review]

1828 examines the court records of approximately 25 women and several men, all of whom were indicted for theft, assault, murder, and the sale of stolen goods in 1828 in Edinburgh's Old Town. The goal is to discuss how the shadow economy [or criminal activity for profit] both followed and sometimes led the capitalist transformation at work in the larger society. Crime was the freest market of all, and could shelter extraordinary and criminal entrepreneurial activity, even as more legitimate innovators could be seen as criminal by those adversely affected.


Coalliers: Unfree Labor in the Making of the Scots Economy

A study of Scots miners in the early modern period, when the men and women who worked the mines were unfree laborers. If estate papers, various court records, local as well as central, and parish records permit, I want to examine the place of these workers in rural communities, living among free tenants and artisans. As the contractual system did not end until 1799, I also intend to investigate the late Enlightenment debate, including the position of the Kirk of Scotland, over tied labor, as well as discussing the contribution that this "second serfdom," considered typical of eastern Europe, made to the development of capitalism in Scotland.


Teaching Experience:

1989, Drake University, assistant and associate professor,
to the present. I am particularly interested in developing the web as a part of course experience, both in those courses taught wholly on the web, and those taught through classroom contact.

World War One
The Woman Intellectual In Western Tradition, 950 BCE-1978 AD
The Practice Of History (Web Course)
Passages To The Modern World, 1500-1775 (Web Course)

numerous Independent Studies, focused on primary research.

Introduction To Women's History, 1180-1945
The New Woman, 1890-1945
Women In Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1848
Sex And Power In European Peasant Society
Introduction To Women's Studies
Passages To The Modern World, I & II
Western Civilization, I & II
Nineteenth-Century Europe
Marxism

1986, Bucknell University, visiting, through 1988.

1985, Mount Holyoke College, visiting, through 1986.

1983-1984, SUNY system, adjunct lecturer.


Fellowships and Awards:

1992, Drake University, Women's Studies Outstanding Faculty Award.

1988, Rockefeller Fellow, University of Iowa program in Rural Women and Feminist Theory

1983, Woodrow Wilson Fellow in Women's Studies, Binghamton University.


Professional Service:

1998-2000,
Executive Board, The Historical Society (and North Central Region organizer)
Editor, History in Review, a web journal of reviews in all areas of history, for The Historical Society.

1997 Executive Board, The Historical Society.


Professional/ Administrative Skills:

Within the department, I am responsible for mentoring junior faculty (3),
overseeing assessment of members and courses, course scheduling, development of a new department web site, development and teaching of new web courses, outreach to majors and prospective students, and development of inter-college majors, such as a new double major in history and TV production, leading to a degree in historical documentary film-making. This will be the only such program in the country; I also look forward to developing a program with the College of Business.

Within the college, I represent the departmentís interests and contributions, solicit advice from others on marketing the department, propose new or redefined faculty positions, develop ties with other fields in the interest of broadening studentsí experience, and review and rewrite departmental guidelines to assure compliance with College and University practices.

Within the university, I have a good many yearsí experience on the Budget Committee, which is responsible for reviewing the entire university budget; on the Academic Integrity Committee, which handles student appeals; and in general education, and the continuing development of the Drake Curriculum, a general education program that is also uniquely tailored to individual students. Given this experience, I feel a responsibility to the community to participate as best I can in all discussions.

Within my profession, I sit on the Executive Board of a new national/international society devoted to the development of civilized debate among historians of all political backgrounds and fields. This society is also devoted to the teaching of historical skills -- research, analysis, and disciplined attempts at objectivity. I also edit an on-line journal of reviews for the society, in which our goal is to assure all scholars of unbiased assessment regardless of the current popularity of their fields, and reconnect the educated public with the historical profession.


University Service:

1999-2000,
Chair, Budget & Business Affairs Committee
Arts & Sciences Council

1998-present
Chair, History Department
Budget & Business Affairs Committee

1998 Chair, General Education subcommittee on Historical Consciousness

1997 on sabbatical

1996 Drake University NCAA Steering Committee
General Education Committee
Chair, Academic Integrity Committee
Admissions and Financial Aid Committee
History Department, Search Committee, Assessment

1995 Drake University NCAA Steering Committee
Ad Hoc Committee to Review the General Education Program
Academic Integrity Committee
Admissions and Financial Aid Committee

1994 Humanities Center Board
Budget and Business Affairs Committee
Cultural Studies Program

1993 Humanities Center Board
Women's Studies Newsletter advisor
Admissions and Financial Aid Committee
Budget and Business Affairs Committee
Cultural Studies Program

1992 Humanities Center Board
Women's Studies Newsletter advisor
Admissions and Financial Aid Committee
Cultural Studies Program

1991 Humanities Center Board
Women's Studies Steering Committee
Women's Studies Newsletter advisor
Ad Hoc Committee to Review Promotion and Tenure Guidelines
In Celebration of Women Week, faculty advisor
Cultural Studies Program

1990 Humanities Center Board
Arts and Sciences Council
Women's Studies Steering Committee
Ad Hoc Review Committee
In Celebration of Women Week, faculty advisor
Cultural Studies Program

1989 Arts & Sciences Council, Drake University
Humanities Center Board
Cultural Studies Program
Women's Studies Steering Committee

1987 Chair, Women's Resource Center Board
Bucknell AIDS Task Force


Invited Lectures and Workshop Presentations:

"Women in Edinburgh's West Port," April 1994, The Cultural Studies
Program, Drake University.

"The Life and Times of Emma Goldman," October 1992, Women's Studies Program, Drake University; in celebration of the publication of the Emma Goldman Papers.

"Confessing Bastard Infanticide in Scotland: The Women, the Courts, and the Doctors," March 1992, Noun Program, Grinnell College.

"The American Punk Goddess, or Taking Essentialism to the Cleaners," The Writers and Critics Series, October 1990, Drake University.

"The Making of Sir Walter Scott's Bourgeois Novel of Infanticide and the
Criticizing of It," March 1989, Women's Studies Program, University of Iowa.

"Agnes Walker in Terregles: Infanticide and Women's Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century Scotland," April 1987, Haverford College.

"Infanticide and the Re-Forming of Women Work and Culture, Scotland 1750-1802," October 1986, Emory University, Women's Studies Student/Faculty Workshops.

"Anonymous Was a Woman: Songs, Salons, and Diaries," with Deborah Hertz and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Upstate New York Women's History Conference Bi-annual Meeting, October 1982, University of Rochester.


Conference Papers:

"Reconstructing Rural Infanticide in 18th-Century Scotland: The Trials of Bell, a Slave, and Agnes Walker," June 1994, EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCOTTISH STUDIES SOCIETY, Brown University, Providence, R.I. [presented in absentia due to illness].

"Confessing Bastard Infanticide: Rural Scots Women and the Language of Angry Maternity, 1689-1812," April 1990, AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES, Minneapolis.

"I Opened the Bodies of Two Unmarried Women: Dr. William Hunter on Infanticide," November 1989, IOWA STATE COLLEGE TEACHERS OF HISTORY, University of Iowa, Ames.

"Infanticide Reconciled: The Two Lives of Isobell Walker," April 1988, AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES, Knoxville.

"Infanticide and the Transformation of Scottish Agriculture," October 1986, SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY ASSOCIATION, St. Louis.

"Infanticide in Eighteenth-Century Scotland," October 1984, NEW YORK STATE CONFERENCE OF EUROPEAN HISTORIANS, State University of New York at Binghamton.

"Can You Sing While You Work? Women in Scotland in 1800," April 1983, WOMEN AND POLITICS IN THE PAST, OAH/FIPSE CONFERENCE on integrating women's history into the curriculum, State University of New York at Binghamton.

"Sex, Death, and the Eight-Hour Day: Women, Quantification, and Social History," November 1982, NEW DIRECTIONS IN ENGLISH SOCIAL HISTORY, SUC-Oneonta.


Other Conference Participation:

Commenting on Stephen Kernsí "A Cultural History of Causality Since 1830" at the national convention of THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Boston University, May 27-29,1999,

Invited as small group discussant, ROCKEFELLER CONFERENCE ON RURAL WOMEN AND FEMINIST THEORY, November 1992, Women's Studies Program, University of Iowa, Iowa City.

Attended, with interest in discussion of a new women's studies association, annual meeting SOUTHERN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, September 1990, New Orleans.

Attended, with interest in developing Drake's Cultural Studies Program, annual CULTURAL STUDIES ASSOCIATION meeting, April 1990, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Workshop participant, WORKSHOP ON THE INTEGRATION OF THE NEW SCHOLARSHIP ON WOMEN INTO THE CURRICULUM, August 1987, Five day retreat at Dickinson College/Central Pennsylvania Consortium of Colleges.

Panel Chair, SHAME AND PUNISHMENT IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE, June 1987, BERKSHIRE CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY OF WOMEN, Wellesley College.


Book Reviews:

"Women, Work, and Place. Audrey Kobayashi, ed. " in The Professional Geographer, November 1996.

"Robson, Ralph The Rise and Fall of the English Highland Clans: Tudor Responses to a Medieval Problem," HISTORY: REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS 18:3, 1990.

"Schwoerer, Lois G. Lady Rachel Russell "One of the Best of Women," HISTORY: REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS 16:4, 1988.

"Bridget Hill, ed. The First English Feminist," HISTORY: REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS 15:3, 1987.


Memberships:

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
European Section, Southern Historical Association
Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society
The Historical Society

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