Footnotes Obituary

Rachel A. Rosenfeld
(1948-2002)

I will always remember [Rachel's] Real-ness, her rigorous yet tactful honesty, her spiritual beauty, physical grace and well-bred graciousness with deepest respect, admiration, and love. David Claris.

Rachel Ann Rosenfeld died on 24 November 2002 at UNC Hospitals, of lung failure resulting from metastatic breast cancer, after a battle of 14 years with the disease. She was 54 years old.

Rachel Rosenfeld from Arkansas. The subject of the ethnically puzzling designation was in fact born in Baltimore, Maryland, on 15 November 1948, the first child of Jerome Rosenfeld and Ethel Hanners. Jerry, a bacteriologist, grew up on New York's East Side, the son of Jewish immigrants from Galicia, Austria (now Poland). Ethel, a psychiatric nurse and later professor of nursing, is of English, Scottish, Irish, Scandinavian, and Native American stock. Somehow from that varied ancestry Rachel inherited light blue eyes, a fair complexion, striking high cheekbones and a reddish tinge in her hair. She moved around with her young professional parents, living part of her early childhood on a farm in Kankakee, Illinois. The family settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Rachel grew up there with two sisters (Deborah and Diana) and two brothers (Peter and George). Rachel attended Hall High School in Little Rock, showing an early aptitude for academic pursuits, which was recognized by many honors, including the National Merit scholarship. She attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, graduating in 1970 with a degree in Anthropology and Sociology. At Carleton she met and married Bill Egbert. She went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, graduating in 1976 with a PhD in Sociology (with minor in Economics and Statistics). She was a student of Aage Sorensen, with whom she maintained close ties until his death in 2001.

Rachel, in her own life, faced some of the dilemmas typical in the careers of men and women that she studied in her research. Her first academic position was at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. The commuting marriage with Bill did not survive and the couple separated. At McGill Rachel met Francois Nielsen. In 1978 she followed Francois to Chicago, taking a position as Senior Study Director at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). While reluctant at the time to leave McGill and academia, she later realized that her stint at NORC had a silver lining, as it immersed her in major survey research projects. Among the beneficial spin-offs of that experience was her book, Farm Women: Work, Farm, and Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 1985), based on a large study of female farm operators that she conducted at NORC.

In 1981 Rachel rejoined academia to become Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. (This time Francois followed.) She rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming Professor of Sociology in 1988; in 2002 she was named William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor. She was also a Fellow of the Carolina Population Center (CPC), and held administrative positions including Vice Chair of the Division of Social Sciences (1991-92, 1993-94) and Acting Associate Dean for Programs and Budgets of the College of Arts and Sciences (1991-92). At the time of her death she was Chair of the Department of Sociology (since 2000).

In her research, Rachel was interested in the influence of social stratification on career and job mobility, particularly for women. Her recent research included studies of the U.S. Women?s movement, work histories of women, academic careers, and work-family policies in advanced industrialized countries. She had been working with Heike Trappe (former CPC postdoctoral scholar) on gender inequality in the early work life in the former East and West Germany and in the United States. She had recently begun a new project studying the nursing profession, inspired by the career of her mother, Ethel.

In the course of her highly productive research career she published, in addition to Farm Women (mentioned above), Reconstructing the Academy (Rachel Rosenfeld, editor, with Jean O'Barr and Elizabeth Minnich; University of Chicago Press, 1988). She published numerous articles in books and in professional journals including American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Science, Signs, Social Forces, and Social Science Research.

Rachel received numerous honors and awards including the Sociologists for Women in Society Award for Outstanding Mentoring (1992), and the first Sociology Department Graduate Student Association Award for Excellence in Mentoring (1998). In 1995, Rachel was the first recipient of the Katherine Jocher-Belle Boone Beard Award of the Southern Sociological Society; the award recognizes distinguished scholarly contributions to the understanding of gender in society. She was awarded the Lara G. Hoggard Professorship for outstanding mid-career faculty (1993-99). In 1995-96, she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California, and in fall 1996, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. She was the 1998 Alpha Kappa Delta honor society speaker at Mississippi State University.

Rachel was active in the Southern Sociological Society, serving as Vice President (1997-98), President-elect (2000-01) and President (2001-02). She has also been a deputy editor of the American Sociological Review (1997-99) and at the time of her death was Chair of the Publications Committee of the American Sociological Association.

Rachel did not have children. She balanced career pressures against her relatively weak desire for children of her own, and reckoned that any maternal cravings she had could be satisfied by being a wonderful aunt to her nieces and nephews: Rachel "Shay" Kohls, Nathan Pang, Jessica Kohls, Leah Babb-Rosenfeld, Reid Kohls, and Josh Pang. She later expanded her "collection" by becoming an equally devoted godmother to Francois' children, Claire and Sam Nielsen.

Rachel's death touches an unusually large circle of people because of her special ability to form and maintain deep friendships with many of the women and men she met during her life, including (current and former) students and postdocs, neighbors, and colleagues. Rachel's talent for friendship was based on her genuine feelings of love and admiration for other people and a truly non-judgmental attitude towards those around her. She was able to discover and appreciate the beauty and qualities in people, and to share her discoveries with others. Rachel habitually said good things about people, behind their back.

Survivors include her parents, Ethel and Jerome Rosenfeld of Chapel Hill, formerly of Greers Ferry, Arkansas; sisters Deborah Kohls of Chapel Hill and Diana Rosenfeld of Cordova, Tennessee; brothers Peter Rosenfeld of Collingsworth, New Jersey and George Rosenfeld of Chapel Hill; nieces and nephews and godchildren mentioned above; her companion, Kirk Denny, and her many friends.

Rachel was buried in the Old Carrboro Cemetery in Carrboro, NC, following a funeral service that took place on November 29 at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Church in Durham.

A trust is being established in memory of Rachel through the Department of Sociology at University of North Carolina. If this is your preference, checks may be made out to: Department of Sociology, and mailed to UNC-CH, Department of Sociology, CB# 3120, 155 Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210. Please designate the check for Rachel Rosenfeld Trust.

Rachel's curriculum vita, pictures, and other documents about her life and work can be viewed on the web at here.

Francois Nielsen, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill