Jenijoy La Belle

Jenijoy La Belle
Jenijoy La Belle in 1978
Born(1943-11-05)November 5, 1943
Olympia, Washington
DiedJanuary 28, 2025(2025-01-28) (aged 81)
OccupationProfessor of English
PartnerRobert N. Essick[1]
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Washington, University of California, San Diego

Jenijoy La Belle (November 5, 1943 – January 28, 2025) was a professor of English at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Her scholarship included published work on William Blake, William Shakespeare, and Theodore Roethke among others. She is also noted for work on "women's identity and physical appearance in 19th- and 20th-century literature". When appointed as an assistant professor in 1969, she was the first woman hired to join the tenure-track faculty at Caltech. She received tenure in 1979 after a contentious legal process, and retired as a full professor in 2007.[1][2]

Early life

La Belle was born to Carlye (née Vieth) and Joseph Joy La Belle, a meter reader for Puget Sound Power and Light and raised in Olympia, Washington. La Belle attended Olympia High School. La Belle attended the University of Washington in Seattle. She met Theodore Roethke there, and later wrote a doctoral thesis about his poetry. She received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1965, and then commenced doctoral work at the University of California, San Diego as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. In 1969, she was awarded a Ph.D. in English for a dissertation on the poetry of Theodore Roethke. In 1969, she was hired as a tenure-track assistant professor at Caltech.[2][3]

Caltech tenure case

In 1969, La Belle began teaching at Caltech. Caltech had not yet admitted women undergraduates, and she was the first woman appointed as a tenure-track professor at Caltech. Olga Taussky-Todd had been tenured as a professor in 1963, but had initially been hired as a research associate.[4][5] In 1974, the English department recommended La Belle for tenure unanimously. Princeton University Press had recently contracted to publish her book The Echoing Wood of Theodore Roethke. The department's recommendation was rejected by the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, then chaired by economic historian Robert Huttenback.[6] La Belle was denied tenure.

La Belle explored several avenues to protest her declination, and in January 1976 she filed a formal complaint of sex discrimination in employment with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In the summer of 1976 La Belle accepted a teaching position at California State University, Northridge. In January 1977 The EEOC issued a finding of sex discrimination that was very critical of Caltech, and expressed a willingness to bring a class-action lawsuit against Caltech. This action by the EEOC was one its earliest findings of sex discrimination although the underlying federal legislation had been passed in 1964.[7]

Caltech's position ultimately emerged from consideration by Lew Wasserman for the Board of Trustees and Robert Christy, the provost. Caltech initiated several measures to reduce sex discrimination and acceded to La Belle's reinstatement with promotion to associate professor in 1977 and with reconsideration for tenure in 1979.[6][8][2][9] Years later, La Belle reflected in a Los Angeles Times column on the implications of her history in the larger context of sex discrimination in employment.[10]

Books

  • (with Edward Young and Robert N. Essick) Night Thoughts or the Complaint and the Consolation Illustrated by William Blake. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications. 1975. ISBN 9780486292144. OCLC 34410814.
  • The Echoing Wood of Theodore Roethke. Princeton University Press. 1976. ISBN 978-0691063126. OCLC 795313716.. The book was very favorably reviewd by Charles Altieri in Criticism.[11]
  • (With Robert N. Essick) Flaxman's Illustrations to Homer. New York: Dover Publications. 1977. ISBN 9780486234779. OCLC 715416618.
  • Herself Beheld: The Literature of the Looking Glass. Cornell University Press. 1988. ISBN 978-0801422027. OCLC 18072158.. The book was reviewed by Mary Barber in The Los Angeles Times, by Alison Townsend in The Georgia Review, and by Daniel R. Schwarz in The D.H. Lawrence Review.[12][13][14]

Los Angeles Times columns

La Belle was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times for several years in the 1990s. The list of her columns includes:

Personal life

By 2007, La Belle had lived in one of Dr. A. Schutt's 1927 Pasadena art colony bungalows for a decade. The Los Angeles Times published two stories about the home after La Belle bought it.[15][16]

External media

"All men have faces, but many women are their faces" — Jenijoy La Belle[12]

References

  1. ^ a b Eller, Cynthia (January 30, 2025). "Caltech Mourns the Passing of Jenijoy La Belle, 1943–2025". California Institute of Technology.
  2. ^ a b c La Belle, Jennijoy (January 12, 2020). "Interview with Jenijoy La Belle" (Interview). Interviewed by Aspaturian, Heidi. California Institute of Technology. Archived from the original on April 26, 2025. Retrieved July 16, 2025.
  3. ^ "Appointments". Science. 168 (3931): 561. May 1, 1978. doi:10.1126/science.168.3931.561.a.
  4. ^ Taussky-Todd, Olga (1980). "Autobiography of Olga Taussky-Todd". Caltech.
  5. ^ "Finding Aid for the Papers of John Todd and Olga Taussky-Todd 1920-2007, bulk 1950-1995". oac.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
  6. ^ a b Christy, I.-Juliana (2003). Achieving The Rare: Robert F Christy's Journey in Physics and Beyond. World Scientific. p. 185. ISBN 9789814460248. OCLC 843037067.
  7. ^ Friedman, Barry (September 29, 2009). "The Court and the Equal Rights Amendment". The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 289. ISBN 9780374220341.
  8. ^ Sabry, Fouad (March 14, 2025). Unten ist viel Platz: Die Grenzen der Innovation und Technologie im Nanobereich erkunden (in German). One Billion Knowledgeable.
  9. ^ Farrar, Glennys. "Farrar, Glennys on 2020 July 14". American Institute of Physics. There was one woman faculty member -- in Humanities -- named Jenijoy La Belle who came up for tenure and didn't get tenure, although she had a lot more professional achievements than her (male) contemporary assistant professor, who they did tenure.
  10. ^ La Belle, Jenijoy (April 19, 1995). "PERSPECTIVES ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION : Is It an Institutional Crutch or Essential to Women's Progress? : A case study from the trenches shows why strong enforcement of non-discrimination must be protected". The Los Angeles Times.
  11. ^ Altieri, Charles (Fall 1977). "Book Reviews". Criticism. 19. Wayne State University Press: 350–361. JSTOR 23102669. Her book on Roethke is an accurate, intelligent study of his uses of past writers. She has no general theories warping her performance of an important function in not only reminding us of how bookish a poet Roethke was, but also in explaining the various ways he made use of the past as a means for expanding his imaginative identity.
  12. ^ a b Barber, Mary (November 15, 1987). "Females See Real Selves, Author Says : Caltech Scholar Reflects on Women and Mirrors". The Los Angeles Times.
  13. ^ Townsend, Alison (Spring 1990). "Book Reviews: Herself Beheld: The Literature of the Looking Glass". The Georgia Review. 44 (1): 318–320.
  14. ^ Schwarz, Daniel R. (Summer 1991). "Reviewed Work(s): Herself Beheld: The Literature of the Looking Glass by Jenijoy La Belle". The D. H. Lawrence Review. 23: 276–278.
  15. ^ Levine, Bettijane (19 July 2008). "A poem of a home". The Los Angeles Times.
  16. ^ Seib, Al (16 September 2014). "17th Century Mindset". The Los Angeles Times.
  17. ^ "Dressing Up Science: Richard Feynman And The Costume Parties Of Al Hibbs". Forbes. October 24, 2017.
  18. ^ "Air Talk with Jenijoy La Belle and John D. Roberts | California Revealed".
  19. ^ https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article25232629.html
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