In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Offering, in Return
  • Cari M. Carpenter (bio)

I still recall my profound awe when my graduate advisor Betty Louise Bell invited me and other graduate students to meet with Dr. Ruoff (I was in no sense on first-name basis with her at that point) when she visited the University of Michigan years ago. Although I was new to Native American studies, I was aware even then of the magnitude of this meeting. And yet her grace and down-to-earth attitude soon put me at ease, and I quickly came to know her as LaVonne.

It was at the Newberry Library a couple of years later, however, that I had the opportunity to understand exactly why LaVonne is so important to this field. After inviting me to lunch with her and Bernd Peyer—an hour in which I sat marveling over my companions' collective knowledge of French food and native literature—LaVonne offered me her notes on the Canadian Mohawk writer E. Pauline Johnson. I eagerly accepted, even if "notes" conjured up a few papers from here and there. The notes were, in fact, something else indeed: a foot or more of work she had collected and written over her career. I sat in her office wondering how I would manage to look through it all in the few moments I had when she told me to take it with me. Feeling guilty, even with her blessings, I passed through the guarded vault of the Newberry and headed to Kinko's. The work she had collected, much of which was Johnson's writing from collections across North America, proved invaluable in my dissertation and later research. I still marvel at the generosity with which she turned over her lifelong work to a graduate student. Yet it's a generosity that no one who [End Page 81] knows LaVonne will find surprising. In addition to the countless other things she has taught us, she models the collegiality and collective spirit to which we should each aspire.

Cari M. Carpenter

Cari M. Carpenter is an assistant professor of English at West Virginia University, where she is also affiliated with the Native American Studies Program and the Center for Women's Studies.

...

pdf

Share