In Memoriam: Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres (1939–2025)
It is with great sadness that we write to announce that Professor Emerita Ruth-Ellen Joeres passed away on July 28, 2025. Professor Joeres was a leading figure in the field of German studies and one of the pioneers of scholarship in feminist German studies. Arriving as assistant professor of German at the University of Minnesota in 1976, where she had a long and distinguished career until her retirement in 2013, Ruth-Ellen made a major impact on both the department and the field, as one of the leading voices in feminist scholarship in German studies.
Ruth-Ellen was the author and editor of at least 14 books, including Respectability and Deviance: Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers and the Ambiguity of Representation, which appeared in 1998 with the University of Chicago Press, and the co-edited volume of essays, with Angelika Bammer, On the Future of Scholarly Writing: Critical Interventions (Palgrave, 2015). Notably, she and Barbara Laslett of sociology brought the feminist journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society to the University of Minnesota for five years (1990–95), during which they co-edited it. A member of the Coalition of Women in German since the 1970s, Ruth-Ellen also edited the Women in German Yearbook. She was the first director of the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies (CAFS), the first graduate program in feminist studies at the University of Minnesota, from 1984 through ‘87.
Ruth-Ellen was also a legendary teacher and mentor of graduate students, and took pride and care in each of the many dissertations she directed. Most recently, some of her former PhD students compiled a Festschrift in her honor: Cultivating Feminist Choices: a FEminiSTSCHRIFT in Honor of Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres, edited by Brigetta M. Abel, Nicole Grewling, Beth Ann Muellner, and Helga Thorson. This important volume chronicles the major contributions to the field of feminist German scholarship that mark Ruth-Ellen's career, including her commitment to opening up the field of scholarly writing to include personal experience.
It is this attention to, and ability to hold the stories of other people, that also made Ruth-Ellen such a consummate mentor and teacher. She was revered by generations of graduate students for her intellectual acuity and her deep caring as a mentor; many students have commented that they call themselves feminists because of her work and influence.
The mark she made on colleagues at the University of Minnesota and beyond was also profound. For example, Professor Emeritus Ray Wakefield recalls how, when he began researching medieval Dutch Beguine Mystics, Ruth-Ellen opened up a new world of possibilities, and he soon found himself attending feminist sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Others have spoken of Ruth-Ellen’s deep kindness and support when they were untenured junior faculty. Colleagues and former students recall Ruth-Ellen’s passionate engagement with ideas and with the world, her fierce intelligence, and her wonderful sense of humor. She had an infectious curiosity, an indefatigable spirit, and, in the words of Liz Mittman, her former PhD student, a "kämpferischer Geist." Indeed, Ruth-Ellen was deeply ethical and fought for what she knew and believed was right. It was this quality of passionate caring—about her students, her colleagues, and the world—for which Ruth-Ellen will most be remembered.
An opportunity to make a gift in memory of Professor Emerita Ruth-Ellen Joeres and support the future of feminist German studies will be announced soon.
