Campus

IU South Bend

Installation Date

3/4/2020         

Marker Text

(1929-2004)

“Feminists are not simply angry women. As persons, we are complex: we are as likely to explode with laughter as with anger.”

Gloria Kaufman was a trailblazing advocate for women’s rights and community outreach. She served as an English professor from 1966 to 1993 at IU’s South Bend campus and founding director of the Women’s Studies program. In 1972, she coordinated IU South Bend’s first Women’s Studies course, “Interdisciplinary Analysis of Woman’s Role.” It was team taught, open to the public, and sought to “redress imbalances perpetrated for hundreds of years by male scholars.” She edited two collections of feminist humor. She co-founded the IUSB Women’s Caucus (1971), was the first Affirmative Action officer (1974) for the campus, and established the Women’s Resource Center (1988). In the South Bend community, she served on city task forces championing women and cultural diversity. A memorial lecture inaugurated in 2005 celebrates Kaufman’s legacy as a “gentle revolutionary.”