Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, pioneer of women’s studies, dies at 98

Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, an English professor at the University of Maryland who was among the first academics to devote their careers to the study of women’s history and literature, died Feb. 10 at a hospice center in Harwood, Md. She was 98.

She had cerebrovascular disease and other ailments, said her daughter, Edith Beauchamp.

Dr. Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham) joined the U-Md. faculty in 1965 and taught in the English department until her retirement in 1990. She helped found the women’s studies program at the university and served as its first coordinator when it was inaugurated in 1973.

“The entire academic establishment is run by men, and they are interested in their experience,” Dr. Beauchamp once told The Washington Post. “In their minds, the stories and lives of women are peripheral. That’s why you’ve never heard of half of the books I teach.”