Professor Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres, a pioneer and leading scholar in feminist German

studies, passed away on July 28, 2025 at the age of 86. 

Born on May 20, 1939 in Baltimore, MD, Ruth-Ellen attended Goucher College and then earned

an M.A. and Ph.D. in German at Johns Hopkins University. After teaching at the University of

Missouri and the University of Wisconsin, Ruth-Ellen took a tenure-track position at the

University of Minnesota in 1976, where she earned tenure and was promoted to full Professor.

She had a long and distinguished career well beyond her retirement in 2013. She was a leading

scholar in the field of German studies whose groundbreaking work on 19th century German

women writers was much admired in the U.S., Germany, Austria, and beyond.

Ruth-Ellen was the author or editor of at least 14 books, including Respectability and Deviance:

Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers and the Ambiguity of Representation (University of

Chicago Press, 1998). As the editor of scholarly volumes she was unusual, and wonderful, in

bringing her contributors together face to face to engage with each other’s work, creating

volumes like On the Future of Scholarly Writing: Critical Interventions (Palgrave, 2015), co-

edited with Angelika Bammer, and The Politics of the Essay: Feminist Perspectives (Indiana

University Press, 1993), co-edited with Elizabeth Mittman.

At the University of Minnesota, Ruth Ellen was the inaugural director of the Center for Advanced

Feminist Studies (CAFS), from 1984 through 1987. CAFS was the first graduate program in

feminist studies at Minnesota and one of the first in the country. She and Professor Barbara

Laslett of Sociology brought the feminist journal, SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and

Society to the University of Minnesota for five years (1990-1995), during which they co-edited it.

Ruth-Ellen also edited the Women in German Yearbook (2002-2004; the journal is now titled

Feminist German Studies).

A legendary teacher and mentor of graduate students, Ruth Ellen took pride and care in each of

the 19 dissertations she directed. In 2021, Brigetta M. Abel, Nicole Grewling, Beth Ann

Muellner, and Helga Thorson compiled a Festschrift in Ruth Ellen’s honor, calling it Cultivating

Feminist Choices: A FEminiSTSCHRIFT in Honor of Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres. This volume,

with contributions by some of the students who worked with her, as well as other colleagues and

collaborators, chronicles the major contributions to the field of feminist German scholarship that

mark Ruth-Ellen’s career, including the way she opened up the field of scholarly writing to

include personal experience. 

She was revered by generations of graduate students for her intellectual acuity and her deep

caring as a mentor; many former students have commented that they call themselves feminists

because of her work and influence. She also generously mentored junior faculty at Minnesota

and across the country. She had an infectious curiosity and an indefatigable spirit.

Ruth Ellen was a long-time member of Women in German (WiG), a community of feminist

scholars that was very important to her. She became a member of WiG in its first decade, the

1970s, and she came out at the WiG Conference in Minnesota in 1989. Ruth-Ellen had a

wonderful sense of humor, and one of her proudest moments was in a non-speaking role at a

WiG cabaret in the late 1990s in Santa Cruz, California, when she played the “Collective

Mammary,” dressed as a gigantic breast.

She was an accomplished amateur pianist, and she was a devoted fan of, and for many years a

subscriber to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. She was also a member of Global Warming, a

group of feminist scholars and friends who for a number of years met monthly to share a meal

and engage in sometimes raucous discussions of world and national politics.

Ruth-Ellen had many dear friends in far-flung places with whom she kept in close touch,

including Heidrun Suhr in Berlin. She often sent them real letters, written with pen and paper.

In her academic department at the University of Minnesota, now called the Department of

German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch (GNSD), she had many dear friends: Frank Hirschbach,

Gerhard Weiss, Tom Plummer, and Kaaren Grimstad preceded her in death, but those who

survive miss her very much: Ray Wakefield, Rick McCormick, Jim Parente, Monika Zagar,

Leslie Morris, Arlene Teraoka, and Cathy Parlin. Arlene and Cathy stayed very close to Ruth-

Ellen until the very end, as did friends from other departments at Minnesota such as Naomi

Scheman and Amy Kaminsky.

Preceded in death by her beloved son Timothy Joeres, she is survived by her beloved daughter

Melissa Joeres, two cherished granddaughters, Ashley Bell and Brittany Cobb, and three

adored great-grandchildren, Victoria Bell, Natalie Bell, and Richard Bell II, the children of Ashley

and Richard Bell. She is also survived by her former husband and friend, Erhard Joeres.