May 21, 2015
Women made the difference: Jane Lunin Perel looks back over 40 years
By Vicki-Ann Downing
Jane Lunin Perel arrived at Providence College to teach English and creative writing in 1971, the same year that the College enrolled its first four-year class of women. A poet, she had just completed a master of fine arts degree in creative writing in poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and wondered how, as one of the few female faculty members, she might fit in.
When she retired last spring as professor emerita of English and of women’s studies, Perel shared a memory of those early days at an event called Lecture Hall: An Epilogue.
“My first day of teaching, I was coming down the stairs in the library, dressed in what I thought was a conservative manner, in a beige dress emblazoned with stampeding zebras,” Perel said. “My hair was extremely full, and I was wearing large zebra earrings.
“I encountered a priest who took one look at me, stumbled, and fell down the stairs. With concern, I jumped down, bent over to try to help him, and saw him literally shrink away from me. I immediately went for help.
“I was so shook up from this event that I phoned my mother, and she said, ‘That’s all right, honey. It can only get better.’”
It did, of course, get better. Women, as professors and as students, quickly established themselves in campus life. In 1978, for the first time, and for every year thereafter, women outnumbered men in the freshman class.
In 1994, after years of lobbying, Perel and others succeeded in establishing a Women’s Studies Program at PC. Women’s studies became a minor in 1999 and a major in 2009. In addition to the more than 250 students who have majored or minored in the subject, many more have taken interdisciplinary courses that included women’s studies. Last fall, when the program celebrated its 20th anniversary, Perel was the keynote speaker following an alumnae panel in Aquinas Hall Lounge.
At Commencement Exercises in May, as the College marked the 40th anniversary of the first four-year graduating class to include women, Perel received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree. Then she was scheduled to leave for Baden-Baden, Germany, for a poetry reading of her latest book, Red Radio Heart (White Pine Press, 2012), which was translated into German and published in that country.
Maybe it wasn’t as surprising as one might think that a woman, and a poet, assimilated so easily into the life of the College.
“A poet lives in the world of body that summons the world of the spirit,” Perel said in her lecture. “And through imagination, and seeking a spiritual path in which the highest form of wisdom is kindness, a poet like me could survive and even flourish at Providence College.”
