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Trailblazer for women at Wake Forest dies
Elizabeth Phillips, 89, is remembered as tough-minded teacher
Photo Courtesy of Wake Forest University
Elizabeth Phillips, an English professor at Wake Forest University, was one of the first two women at the school to attain the rank of full professor.
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Published: June 26, 2008
In her more than 50 years as a member of the Wake Forest University community, Elizabeth Phillips was a trailblazer, who challenged herself and her students to learn about life through literature.
Phillips, 89, died Tuesday night.
"She went at life with both hands and didn't hang back and wasn't shy," said Hayes McNeill, who took some of Phillips' poetry courses as a student at Wake Forest in the late 1960s.
Phillips was a tough-minded teacher, he said, who wanted her students to dissect and understand the intricacies of literature.
"There was a lot of give-and-take in her class, which was fairly unusual in those days," he said.
Whether students were reading Whitman, Dickinson or T.S. Eliot, Phillips subjected literature to a simple test: What did it mean in real life, and was it valid? he said.
When Phillips arrived at Wake Forest in 1957, she was one of few women on campus. She went on to become one of the first two women to be named a full professor, said Mary DeShazer, a professor of English and women's and gender studies.
Phillips wanted young women to take their intellectual abilities seriously, DeShazer said. She expected them to be strong, smart and go out into the world and accomplish things.
Her interest in women led Phillips to support the development of a women's and gender studies program at Wake Forest, DeShazer said. In 2006, the university established the Elizabeth Phillips Award, which recognizes the best undergraduate or graduate student essay written on the subject of women's and gender studies during the academic year.
Throughout the course of her career, Phillips received hundreds of letters from students who thanked her for serving as a mentor and role model, DeShazer said. Many of those students, especially women, went on to pursue academic careers.
Ed Wilson, a retired provost at Wake Forest, called Phillips a splendid woman who was strong, able and committed to the university and its students. She wrote books on Edgar Allen Poe, Marianne Moore and Emily Dickinson, while carrying a full teaching load.
Though she retired officially in 1989, Phillips continued to be active on campus and she was an enthusiastic support of Hillary Clinton's campaign for president, Wilson said.
Despite her intellectual acumen, Phillips never made others feel inferior, friends and former students said. She had a wry wit, a curiosity about life and a tendency to sweep other people up in her enthusiasms.
"She didn't demand so much as challenge folks," McNeill said. "You wanted to rise to her expectations."
Funeral arrangements are pending.
■ Mary Giunca can be reached at 727-4089 or at mgiunca@wsjournal.com.
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