Elizabeth Fox-Genovese: First and Lasting Impressions

At times of loss, I am reminded of the passage from Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season. . . . a time to be born and a time to die." But death is almost always untimely. There is so much still to say and to do—even for those who believe and live in the hope of salvation, even for those who can acknowledge their readiness to depart this mortal life because of age or illness. Death seems to come not in the fullness of time, but in time cut short. Thus, it is hard for me to grasp that Elizabeth Fox-Genovese has written her last thought and uttered her last controversial statement. It is harder yet to grasp that she leaves behind her beloved husband Eugene Genovese, dear friends, and a once-upon-a-time friend like me who, despite our differing politics, must acknowledge her inspirational and formative role in my life. Forever etched in my mind are fond memories of moments spent with Betsey, Gene, their dog Josef, and various cats along the way—Tapestry, Cleopatra, Georgia, and Carolina—first in their home in Rochester and later in Atlanta.

I met Betsey when I began graduate school at the University of Rochester in 1975. I had come to Rochester to study with her husband. I had read virtually everything by Gene and sought his mentorship. After reading Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), I believed him to be the most brilliant historian in the academy. I marveled at his skills of conceptualization, his complex thinking, his Marxian analysis of a different sort, and his interdisciplinarity, which drew extensively from historical sources and also from the insights of Antonio Gramsci, Hegel, and the latest anthropological and sociological scholarship. Among the 1970s scholars of slavery, Gene most deftly interwove the hegemony of planter ideology and the everyday resistance of the slaves. Gene was the first historian to take seriously the religion of Southern slaves—to probe their beliefs and present them in a comparative perspective, along with beliefs of Southern whites and of slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil. Because of my primary interest in African American and women's history, I did not initially anticipate Betsey's potential influence on my research agenda. Her writing and teaching in the midseventies focused on Europe. I took the women's history course taught by Christopher Lasch.

In the dedication page of Roll, Jordan, Roll, Gene had written: "For MISS BETSEY, My own personal Bright and Morning Star." It did not take long for me to discover that Betsey's brilliance complemented Gene's, shining equally as bright and indeed in more directions. She had a densely theoretical and multidisciplinary mind, and she also had an elegant appearance and style, along with amazing gourmet cooking skills. The "royal couple of academia," as they would later be called, offered their students frequent opportunities for intellectual exchange inside and outside the classroom. They had a warm and special way of bringing students into their home and into their lives; so too did my teacher Stanley Engerman and his wife Judy. I had never before experienced such a fascinating combination of spirited intellectual exchange and convivial hospitality, with the Genoveses proclaiming the prebourgeois character of slavery and Engerman proclaiming slavery's capitalist character.

If first impressions are truly lasting ones, I must confess that Betsey's graduate seminar in European history introduced me to abiding themes in her scholarship and in her personality. To apply the word "abiding" may seem odd, perhaps erroneous with respect to someone whose work and loyalties changed significantly in the last fifteen years of her life. And yet for me, the Elizabeth Fox-Genovese whom I encountered as a professor in my first year of graduate school left lastingly valid impressions. The first impression was her scholarly and personal commitment to insert often neglected voices and experiences into traditional narratives for the purpose of upsetting timeworn assumptions. Thus Betsey's inclusion of the Haitian Revolution in our discussion of the democratic revolutions took me by pleasant surprise. Today, such an inclusion may seem...