Agate Nesaule

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Agate Nesaule
American Book Award
(1996)

Agate Nesaule (January 23, 1938 – June 29, 2022) was a Latvian-born American writer and professor of English on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater. Her 1995 memoir A Woman in Amber won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1996.[1]

Early life and education

Nesaule was born in Latvia, daughter of Peteris V. Nesaule and Valda Nesaule.[2] Her father was a Lutheran minister; her mother earned a Ph.D in her seventies.[3][4] As a little girl, Nesaule fled the wartime upheaval with her family, and spent time as a child prisoner in Germany during World War II. The family lived in a displaced persons camp, and moved to the United States in 1950, when she was 12 years old.[5]

Nesaule attended Shortridge High School,[6] and won a statewide Latin competition in Indiana; the prize was a four-year scholarship to Indiana University Bloomington.[7][8] She earned a bachelor's and a master's degree at Indiana, and completed doctoral studies in English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[4] Her dissertation was titled "The Feminism of Doris Lessing" (1972).

Career

Nesaule was a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater from 1963 to 1996. She and Ruth Schauer founded the school's women's studies program in 1972. Her memoir A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (1995)[9] won the American Book Award in 1996.[4][10] She also published two novels, and academic articles.[11]

In 1998, Nesaule was an invited guest when President Bill Clinton signed the agreement required to allow Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to join NATO.[12] In 2019, she wrote in an essay, "I have lived in the United States for 70 years. I am an American citizen in love with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I am immensely grateful for all that this country has given me, yet I feel I do not really belong here."[13]

Publications

  • "A Doris Lessing Checklist" (1973)[14]
  • "Women and Crime: Sexism in Allingham, Sayers, and Christie" (1974, with Margot Peters)[15]
  • "Why Women Kill" (1975, with Margot Peters)[16]
  • "Doris Lessing's Feminist Plays" (1976)[17]
  • "Murder in Academe" (1977, with Margot Peters)[18]
  • "What Happened to Aspazija? In Search of Feminism in Latvia" (1993)[19]
  • A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (1995)[20]
  • In Love with Jerzy Kosinski: A Novel (2010)[21]
  • "Feminism and Art in Fay Weldon's Novels" (2013)[22]
  • Lost Midsummers: A Novel of Women's Friendship in Exile (2019)
  • "Exile is irreversible" (2019)[13]

Personal life

Nesaule married a fellow English professor, Harry Krouse. They had a son, Boris. They divorced. She died in Madison, Wisconsin in 2022, at the age of 84.[4]

References

  1. ^ Holt, Patricia (1996-07-14). "Award Winners Reflect Diversity". The San Francisco Examiner. pp. 216, 225. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Nesaule, Valda (death notice)". The Indianapolis Star. 1978-12-15. p. 64. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ "Rev. Peteris V. Nesaule, 88, founder, minister of Latvian Lutheran Church". The Indianapolis Star. 1996-09-21. p. 47. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ a b c d "In Memoriam: Agate Nesaule, 1938-2022". Women In Academia Report. 2022-07-20. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  5. ISBN 978-90-420-1959-1
    .
  6. ^ Shortridge High School, Annual (1956 yearbook): 129. via Ancestry
  7. ^ "Agate Nesaule Obituary (2022) - Madison, Wisconsin - Madison.com". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  8. ^ "Isadore Feibleman Scholarship Students Enter Collegiate Life". The Indianapolis Star. 1956-09-16. p. 69. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ Levine, Miriam (1995-12-17). "In the prison of memory". The Boston Globe. p. 219. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. S2CID 229509911
    .
  11. ^ Moe, Doug (2009-05-01). "A lifetime of writer's block lifted". Wisconsin State Journal. p. 2. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ^ Martell, Chris (1998-01-24). "From Exile to Welcome". Wisconsin State Journal. p. 21. Retrieved 2023-01-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ a b Nesaule, Agate (August 28, 2019). "Agate Nesaule: Exile is irreversible". The Cap Times. Retrieved 2023-01-12.
  14. JSTOR 1207476
    .
  15. JSTOR 43468591
    .
  16. PMID 1123461
    .
  17. ISSN 0093-1705
    .
  18. JSTOR 43469001
    .
  19. ^ Nesaule, Agate (1992-10-01). "What happened to Aspazija? In search of feminism in Latvia". Hecate. 18 (2): 112–126.
  20. OCLC 36163412
    .
  21. OCLC 379424994
    .
  22. ISSN 0011-1619
    .
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