Margaret E. Ward

Margaret E. Ward is Professor of German. She joined the Wellesley College faculty in 1971 and completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University (Bloomington) in 1973 in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She is a 1965 graduate of Wilson College (magna cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa) with majors in German and history. In addition to German language and literature, her graduate work included comparative literature and Western European Studies. For two years (1967-1969) she held DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and Western European Studies fellowships that enabled her to do graduate study in Berlin and Paris. Her doctoral thesis focused on the interaction of intent, content and form in the plays of two German dramatists, Rolf Hochhuth and Peter Weiss, and a French dramatist, Armand Gatti. As a Teaching Assistant at I.U. she was a recipient of the university-wide Lieber Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Now in her last year of an early-retirement pattern of half-time teaching, Professor Ward has taught all the courses in the German language sequence from the first to the fifth semester over the years. In January 2006 she taught an intensive third-semester Intermediate German course (Wintersession-in-Vienna) for the third time. She has also developed and offered a wide range of upper-level courses in German literature, culture and film. Some of her favorites have been: "Berlin in the Twenties," “Post-war German Culture," The Woman Question 1750-1900," "Romanticism," and "Constructing the Other in German Cinema." She has given senior seminars on many topics, including Bertolt Brecht and Christa Wolf. In Fall 2009, she will repeat a seminar entitled “Latin America and the Carribbean in the German Imagination.” She has taught several different courses in the “Writing Across the Curriculum” program using the city of Berlin as a focal point. Professor Ward has also directed many undergraduate honors theses and independent study projects, most recently one on nineteenth-century historical ballads.

Professor Ward’s areas of special interest include 19th- and 20th-century German literature, and women's biography. Her research has centered on post-Brechtian political theater, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers. Ward's book, Rolf Hochhuth (Boston: Twayne, 1977) provides an introduction to a key political dramatist of the 60s and 70s. Her book, Fanny Lewald: Rebellion and Renunciation, was published in the series “Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature,” vol. 85 (New York: Peter Lang,) in 2006. A number of Professor Ward’s students were involved in various stages of the research and writing for this major project on a nineteenth-century novelist and early advocate of women’s education, including archival work on Lewald’s unpublished letters and diaries in East Berlin.

Professor Ward’s articles on Bertolt Brecht, Volker Braun, Ingeborg Drewitz, and Fanny Lewald, among others, have appeared in such scholarly journals as Brecht Jahrbuch, The Women in German Yearbook, Studies in GDR Culture and Society, and The University of Dayton Review. She has been a regular contributor to the annual German publication, Berühmte Frauenkalender and its Internet offshoot, www. fembio.org, where a number of her bio-bibliographical sketches are published in both German and English, most recently one on Germaine Greer.

Her essays have appeared as chapters in the following books: Women Writers in German-Speaking Countries (Greenwood), Thalia's Daughters: German Women Dramatists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Francke), and Politics in Literature (Camden). For her research, Professor Ward has been the recipient of several Andrew W. Mellon travel grants from the College, and both National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and Fulbright fellowships,all in support of archival work in Germany.

Between 1978 and 1999 Professor Ward served her department six times as Chair for a total of 10 1/2 years of service in this capacity. Subsequently she directed the Wellesley-in-Vienna study abroad program from 2000-02 and again in 2003-04. She has also served on a wide range of committees including the Board of Admission and Advisory Committee on Budgetary Affairs, both of which she chaired for two consecutive years. She has been on Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty Appointments, Faculty Merit, Financial Aid, President’s Advisory Council, and various ad hoc committees, search committees, and advisory boards. She has on occasion served as the "outside member" of Reappointments and Promotions committees of the Russian Department and the Women’s Studies Department. As part of a college-wide curricular review in the 1990s she co-chaired the Task Force on Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching. Currently she serves on the Fulbright Fellowship committee, the Tanner Conference Committee, and as the College's faculty representative to the Seven College Conference.

Prof. Margaret E. Ward, third from right, greets alumnae during an open house held annually by the German Department during Alumnae Reunion.

Professor Ward was one of the faculty members who helped bring Women's Studies as an full-fledged academic program to Wellesley College in the late 1980s, and she has served on its Advisory Board, as well as on the Board of Overseers of the Center for Research on Women. Recently the Women's Studies Department instituted a prize in her honor. It is awarded each year to a graduating senior or seniors in recognition of their excellence in Women's Studies.

Professor Ward has repeatedly shown her concern for the overall quality of community life by being a faculty mentor to new faculty, by service on the Trustees Student Life Committee, and by regular participation in programs for first-year students. Her special concern for students as both a teacher and mentor was recognized when she was named to the rotating William R. Kenan, Jr. professorship from 1995-97. She keeps in touch with former students both here and abroad and started the annual department newletter, Wellesley Wegweiser, in 1994 to help strengthen these ties.

In 1994 Professor Ward also organized a workshop at Wellesley on Interdisciplinary German Studies for twelve New England colleges and universities. From 1995-1997 she was a member of the national steering committee of the Coalition of Women in German, an allied organization of the Modern Language Association of America. She is currently a member of Women in German, the German Studies Association and the American Association of Teachers of German, as well as a Boston-based WIG study group that has met monthly for over twenty years. She is also in Delta Phi Alpha, the German Honorary Society, and served previously both as president of the local AAUP chapter and as vice-president of the Wellesley chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She still serves on the Advisory Board of the Institut für feministische Biographieforschung (Hanover, Germany).

Professor Ward is married to Dr. Thomas E. J. de Witt, President Emeritus of Lasell College in Newton (Auburndale). The couple met when Dr. de Witt taught German history at Wellesley in 1973-74. At the time of Presdient de Witt's retirement in 2007, Lasell College awarded Prof. Ward a Doctorate of Humane Letters , h. c. in recognition of her contributions over 19 years to the mission of Lasell and her commitment to higher education. The couple have two sons, Nelson, a graduate of Wentworth Institute of Technology, and Derek, a graduate of Macalester College.

During her last sabbatical in 2004-05 Professor Ward completed research on a book that tells the moving story of her older son’s adoption, set against the backdrop of the Salvadoran Civil War and its aftermath, highlighting the issue of disappeared children. The completed manuscript, entitled Missing Mila, is currently under consideration by several presses.

Prof. Ward now divides her time between Wellesley and her residences in Harrisville, NH and Bonita Springs, FL. For many years she was active in the Lake Skatutakee Association, an association of lake residents and property owners concerned with water quality, dam safety, and other environmental protection issues. She has served as its president, vice-president, newsletter editor, and archivist and still participates in its “Weed Watch.” She and her husband are Overseers of Historic Harrisville, Inc. and supporters of other local organizations like the Monadnock Conservancy and Apple Hill Chamber Players, Playing for Peace program (Nelson, NH). They are members of both the Community Church of Harrisville and Chesham (NH) and Naples (FL) UCC church and sing in both choirs, as well as with the Bonita Bay Singers. In retirement she looks forward to having more time for singing, travel and study, as well as involvement in community service projects.

Profile last updated: 8/09