Name Evelyn Beck | ||
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Books Kafka and the Yiddish Theater: Its Impact on His Work | ||
Evelyn Torton Beck is a scholar, teacher and activist who specialized in Women’s Studies, Jewish Women’s Studies and Lesbian Studies. She is a founding member of The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and its Jewish and lesbian caucuses and helped establish the Madison, Wisconsin chapter of the National Lesbian Feminist Organization (NLFO).
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Early life
Born in Vienna, Austria, Beck is a child survivor of the Holocaust who came to the United States in 1940. She received her BA from Brooklyn College, her MA from Yale University and holds Ph.D.s in Comparative Literature (University of Wisconsin, 1969) and Clinical Psychology (Fielding Graduate University, 2004).
Educator
She was a professor in Comparative Literature, German, and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin from 1972 to 1984, at which time she became Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Since 2002 she has been Professor Emerita at the University of Maryland and an Alum Research Fellow with the Creative Longevity and Wisdom Initiative at Fielding Graduate University.
She created numerous interdisciplinary courses on topics such as Women in the Arts, Mothers and Daughters, Jewish Women in International Perspective, Women and the Holocaust, Death and Dying in Modern Literature, Lesbian Studies, Gender, Power and the Spectrum of Difference, Healing Women, and Feminist Perspectives on Psychology.
Scholarly work
Beck is the author of numerous books and essays focusing on Franz Kafka and Yiddish theatre (1972), Frida Kahlo and Isaac Bashevis Singer (with whom she worked closely and whose stories she translated from Yiddish). She is the editor of Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology (1982/1989).
She wrote on multiculturalism and the impact of sexism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia on women’s identity development. She lectured on these themes in Europe, Japan and across the United States. Interviews with her appear in English, German and Japanese journals. She was invited to discuss Freud’s legacy on The Diane Rehm Show and was heard on NPR with a critique of the epithet "Jewish American Princess" on which she wrote.
As of 2015 she was editing a collection of her essays and revising her book-length manuscript Physical Illness, Psychological Woundedness and the Healing Power of Art in the Life and Work of Franz Kafka and Frida Kahlo.
Another avenue of current research focuses on the impact of sacred circle dance on the lives of older women. After intensive training with teachers from Europe, South America, and the United States, she began teaching this dance practice regularly in the Washington, DC area, while running inter-arts workshops combining poetry with sacred circle dance at professional meetings.
Personal life
Her first marriage was to mathematician Anatole Beck, with whom she raised two children, Nina and Micah. She is now married to Lee Knefelkamp, an academic in psychology and education and she is a grandmother.