WGS Steering Committee Members

Libby Balter Blume

Co-director of the Woman's Studies Program from 1999-2001, I hold an appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, where I coordinate the Certified Family Life Educator Program. I have taught at UDM for 16 years, beginning as the Coordinator for Child Development and Director of the Child Development Center on the Outer Drive campus. My undergraduate degree is in Studio Art and, while teaching art to young children, I earned a Master's degree in Creative Arts Education. After working with Head Start at the county and national levels, serving as a Child Development Associate trainer in California and Maryland, and becoming a mother, I decided to return to grad school. I became the Director of the Child Development Research Center in Lubbock, Texas while earning my Ph.D. in Human Development at Texas Tech University.

My current research and writing is on the development of children who engage in nonstereotyped gender role activities during the transition to adolescence. For 10 years, I have served on the Executive Board of the Michigan Classic Ballet Company. Currently I am studying ballet dancers (my son Nathan was a ballet dancer for 12 years) and am writing about the embodiment of identity, corporeality, and self-image through gender construction in families. During Term I 2002-03, I was on a research leave to begin work on a textbook on Middle Childhood: Ages 8 to 18 which will be used in PYC 236 starting in Term II 2005.
Raised in Detroit, I am caregiver to my severely disabled sister who lives with me since our mother died. I also am the mother of three sons: Nathan is an electronic critique major at UDM; Sean is a history graduate of UDM and WSU law school grad; and Wesley just moved to Florida. Tom, my husband of 26 years, is Associate Professor of Counseling at Oakland and a family therapist who is co-parenting our latest addition, Yellow Rose, a golden retriever.

Claire Crabtree

Claire Crabtree teaches American Literature, Creative Writing, Women's Studies, Folklore and courses on poetry and fiction. A Faulkner specialist, she has published on Faulkner and on such women writers as Erdrich, Hurston, and Toni Morrison. She is also a published poet. Crabtree was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Timi oara, Romania in 1994-95. She holds a B.A. degree from Trinity College, a M.A. degree from Fordham, and a Ph.D. degree from Wayne State Unversity. She came to UDM in 1987. She has served as Director of the Women's Studies Program, and her Poetry Writing class has produced legions of published poets. In 1995 in Szeged, Hungary, Claire happened on this statue of Good Soldier Sveig, a humorous character in European literature (a la Mash or Catch 22). Says Claire, "We became fast friends."

Amy Green Deines

Yolanda Fleischer

Fleischer's most recent UDM directing work includes "Lobby Hero," "The Moonlight Room" and "Children's Hour." Her favorite UDM work includes "Two" with Arthur Beer and "The Speed of Darkness" with David Regal and David Fox. In the professional community, Fleischer has recently directed "The Drawer Boy" at the Detroit Repertory Theatre and "Door to Door" at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre. The focus in much of her work is on the relationship of the art of theatre and social justice and women's issues. She has recently studied at the Actor's Center in NYC with Robert Cohen and Slava Dolgatchev.

Carla Groh

Heather Hill-Vasquez

Heather Hill-Vásquez, Associate Professor of English, received a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington in Seattle. She joined the University in 2003. Her research focuses on issues of performance, spirituality, and gender in medieval texts, and her early literature courses consistently explore these topics. Her book, Sacred Players: The Politics of Response in the Middle English Religious Drama, was published in March 2007 by the Catholic University of America Press. More recently, she has published articles on the changing symbolic meaning of the figure of the spinning woman in fifteenth-century England and on the role of pilgrimage in the medieval drama. Hill-Vásquez also directs the Women's and Gender Studies Program. She received UDM's Faculty Achievement Award in 2007. Her website speaks volumes.

Kris McLonis

Jane Schaberg

My childhood in St Louis was a happy and priviledged one, with a wise mother, an adventuresome father and 3 siblings; plus an assortment of family animals. As the oldest and as one who had survived a serious heart operation at 3, I was pretty much allowed free rein - to think, speak, explore, travel. Many friends from my youth are still close friends. I came to Detroit because I wanted a challenging urban environment - and I got it! For thirteen years I lived downtown in a kind of semi-commune arrangement on 17th street in the Briggs Community area which was very poor and burnt out (and is even poorer and more burnt out now). There I met Carolyn Johnson, who would become my goddaughter, and Anthony Philips Martin, who would become my foster son and godson. The experience of living there and taking root has marked my thinking and my work, providing as it did first-hand experience of the devastation wrought by racism, sexism, classism, capitalism, and of the incredible courage of the survivors who prevail against oppression. To help me get strength back after a bout with breast cancer and a year of chemo sixteen years ago, I returned to the sport I loved best, horseback riding; my horse Rappahannock is stabled in Windsor and I ride as often as possible

I went to college (Manhattanville BA in philosophy) graduate school (Columbia University/ Union Theological Seminary MA in systematic theology, PhD in biblical studies) in New York. R.E. Brown, J.L Martyn, J.A. Sanders were some of the professors who influenced me most; I had no woman professor in graduate school. My dissertation, on the use of Jewish mystical tradition in the final section of the Gospel of Matthew was published in 1982; my book on the Infancy Narratives of Matthew and Luke in 1987/1992. I am now finishing a book - not yet titled - on Mary Magdalene traditions, using Virginia Woolf as a mentor. It was the power of the literature that first attracted me to biblical studies. Then in graduate school I became intruigued with feminist critique and reinterpretation, which has focused my work. With Alice Bach, I am currently co-editing a festschrift for Prof. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza of Harvard.

I'm a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, NOW, Catholics for Free Choice, and of the steering committee of the SBL section, Women in the Biblical World. Participation in the Detroit Writers Guild has fostered an important dimension in my life, creative writing; I have published about fifteen poems in various journals and hope to give more time and energy to this in the future.

Rosemary Weatherston