A Brief Tribute to Our Feminist Scholar Sister
Helen M. Eigenberg (1958-2019)
-by Joanne Belknap, Mona Danner, and Nancy Wonders
VIDEO OF HELEN EIGENBERG BEING INTERVIEWED BY JOANNE BELKNAP FOR THE AS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Last night (1/25/19) we lost our dear sister, Helen Eigenberg. Helen was an amazing scholar and friend who was also an incredibly dedicated teacher and community and campus activist. And she had the best sense of humor.
Helen’s made many scholarly contributions to criminology and, importantly, her work had a real impact on justice practices and policies. Had Helen not been stricken with stage 3B breast cancer at the age of 38, at the same time she was denied tenure in an outrageous act of sexism (the case was settled out of court), we are confident she would have published even more cutting-edge feminist contributions to criminology. We can’t
recognize everything Helen published, but here are some examples:
• Eigenberg, H. (1990). “The National Crime Survey and Rape: The Case of the Missing Question.” Justice Quarterly, 7(4):655-671.
This article was influential in drastically changing how rape was asked
about in the NCVS (from the NCS).
• Eigenberg, H., K.E. Scarborough, & V.E. Kappeler. (1996). “Contributory Factors Affecting Arresting Domestic and Non-Domestic Assaults.” Journal of Police, 15(4):27-54.
This was the first empirical documentation that police are significantly more likely to arrest in non-DV than DV assaults.
• Helen’s numerous publications on rape in men’s prisons (e.g., Journal of Criminal Justice, 2000; Prison Journal, 1989 & 2000; chapter in 1994 edited book Violence in Prisons), including guards’/COs’ views of prisoner rape, where in one she reported “in the prison vernacular” the guards “seem to offer little assistance to inmates except the age-old advice of “fight or fuck” [as cited on p. 277 in a 2012 article by James E. Robertson in the Federal Sentencing Reporter). This scholarship on prison rape resulted in her being interviewed on 60 Minutes on March 3, 1996 (Episode 25, Season 2) (something she felt was the nail in her coffin for being denied tenure by some jealous colleagues).
Helen served as Chair of the Division on Women and Crime and was a founder of the journal Feminist Criminology (FC). When FC’s first editor had to suddenly step down, Helen took it on with no backlog of accepted articles and worked tirelessly to keep our journal alive, including to assist many new feminist scholars in getting their manuscripts up to speed for FC. (Jo was Helen’s “Deputy Editor” which we quickly renamed “Deputy Dog.” Jo spent her spring break and first time in Chattanooga working on some of these manuscripts with Helen in her house which was an amazing time together.)
In addition to her dedication to Feminist Criminology, Helen’s commitment to the DWC is far too extensive to cover (as are her publications, advocacy, and friendship) in this tribute, but here are some:
• In 2012, Helen was the inaugural winner of the DWC’s Sarah Hall Award, named after Susan Case’s predecessor of over 3 decades, Sarah Hall, who was a huge friend to our division. This award recognizes outstanding service to the DWC and professional interests regarding feminist criminology (see https://blog.utc.edu/news/2012/12/dr-helen-eigenberg-earns-inaugural-national-award/).
• 2008 recipient of the DWC’s Inconvenient Woman of the Year Award, given for her implementation of the Green Dot program to fight campus rape at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, as well as countless other activist contributions aimed at resisting violence against women on and off of UT-C’s campus.
Helen’s service to DWC has been extensive. She was the DWC website guru from the beginning of our website – and for many years after – and also chair of the DWC nominations for years. The four of us (Joanne Belknap, Mona Danner, Helen Eigenberg and Nancy Wonders) met through various
ASC and ACJS events starting in the late 1980s, but we primarily bonded through the DWC as feminist criminologists (there weren’t so many of us in those days) and our discovery that we shared a similar sense of humor and love of life. After an incredibly intense DWC meeting in San Francisco in 1991 where many members righteously and powerfully disclosed sexual exploitation and assaults by male colleagues at professional meetings and on our campuses, our fearsome foursome friendship formed. At the next San Francisco ASC (2000), we went to Haight-Ashbury and realized we were all born in 1958, and we became the 58 GRRRLS. Since we became friends, three of the four of us have had breast cancer and two of us had painful “no-confidence” votes in our positions of department chair by colleagues we thought were our friends and for whom we’d advocated. We have supported each other through joyful (and painful) life and work events with an enduring love and respect.
The year we turned 50, Helen organized our first no-work event, renting a cabin near Gatlinburg. It was during this trip that Helen hatched the plot to get Jo elected ASC President. While Jo laughed uproariously, Helen started planning and we all pitched in to bring the plan to fruition as Jo was 2014 ASC President. Since then, we have had had many mini-vacations together in varied places and varied times of the year, most recently just before the ASC conference in November (2018), again in a cabin near Gatlinburg, again
organized by Helen who had put a return trip on her bucket list. Helen’s motto – which we all should adopt – is to “do more of what makes you happy!” and, although her final year was very difficult, it was also filled
with a lot of happiness and love.
A year ago, in January 2018, Helen was diagnosed with terminal cancer in her lungs, bones, and later, her brain. Her courage and humor over this last year is nothing short of sheroic. Her doctors didn’t think she could survive the intensive chemo, radiation and surgeries of the initial treatments starting last January (so hadn’t put in a port). She obviously did, to the doctors’ amazement. The three of us went to stay with her last March. One of our goals was to help her put some weight back on and we (and her doctors) were thrilled when she’d put on five pounds. (Jo put on 8 pounds—true story.) Last summer, Helen came to Jo’s & Scott’s (Jo’s partner) in Colorado to buy marijuana—on the advice of her palliative care providers— to help with her pain and the treatment-induced nausea, which Helen and Jo turned into a week-long adventure. Jo’s Boulder medical friends assisted in the advice on the best dispensaries and brands at a dinner at her house, where Molly Bowers, was also present. Molly had a terrible wrongful conviction case that the DWC was very helpful in and Molly and Helen had hoped to meet for a long time (via Jo’s reports of each to the other).
Helen has referred to Scott as “The Saint” for years, for being able to live with Jo given her rate of lost keys and wallets and insufficient clothes and toiletries at ASC conferences. Of course, The Saint loved Helen! He made a wonderful meal and Helen, Molly, Jo, Scott, and their medical friends ate in the backyard. Later we heard that at another dinner party someone said, “that’s probably the first and last time I’ll eat a dinner where both a former incarcerated person [Molly] and a former prison guard [Helen] discussed how fucked up the prison system is!” One of many priceless moments was in one of the dispensaries when about 30 people were in line with Helen and Jo and a cheery, loud, youthful voice said, “Hi, Professor Belknap!” and everyone in the dispensary burst out laughing.
Although we’ve known Helen was dying for the last year, she was so vibrant in November in our Tennessee cabin that we didn’t realize we would never see her again. She had plans for another trip to Colorado in December and we were all talking about our next adventures together, believing we had more time. In December, after a final trip to a much-loved Mexico beach resort with her mom, she got pneumonia and went downhill quickly. She passed away in her home on Friday, January 25, 2019.
This world lost an amazing feminist scholar, teacher and activist, and our very dear, smart, generous, and hilarious sister.
With Great Sadness but Also Gratitude for Having Been Loved by Helen,
Jo, Mona, and Nancy
READ AN ADDITIONAL TRIBUTE TO HELEN EIGENBERG ON THE “IMAGINING JUSTICE” BLOG
