The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/21/08 Section: News

Media Credit: JON KIM Patricia Bell-Scott, professor of child and family development and women's studies, speaks about her experiences with biographical writing Friday. She said she spent years researching her subjects. [Click to enlarge]

It's difficult for a writer to separate herself from her work, a professor said.

Patricia Bell-Scott, professor of child and family development and women's studies, spoke about her biographies of Hilda Davis and Pauli Murray during the weekly Friday Speaker Series sponsored by the Institute for Women's Studies.

"Doing a biography is a journey with a friend," Bell-Scott said.

The first subject, Davis, was the first black woman to earn a doctorate from the University of Chicago. She also served as the first full-contract black female faculty member at the University of Delaware.

Murray, the second subject of discussion, received three law degrees as a black woman in the midst of the Civil Rights movement.

She was also the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest.

In the speech titled "Doing Biography: Reflections of a Black Feminist," Bell-Scott shared her thoughts about the process she experienced when writing the biographies of both Davis and Murray.

The subjects were born at the turn of the century and alive to see the birth of the Civil Rights movement.

They were women who were given an education and who were able to make a change in the United States, Bell-Scott said.

Bell-Scott spent years researching the women.

She said she learned about these women by delving through personal testimony, conducting interviews of close family and friends.

Bell-Scott studied the work they did throughout their long careers.

Color prejudice among blacks, sexuality, mental illness and racial tensions were issues that revealed themselves during Bell-Scott's research.

Bell-Scott explained the difficulty of separating herself from the lives of her subjects.

"I don't subscribe to the view where the biographer is silent," Bell-Scott said. "You are speaking by choosing a particular life."

The passing away of Bell-Scott's father during her writing of the death of Murray's aunt was an instance when her life and her subject's life intertwined.

"I was afraid that I may have given too much weight on this topic because of my own grief," Bell-Scott said.

She sorted her thoughts by having conversations with her subjects and herself in her journal during this time, Bell-Scott said.

Bell-Scott said she learned how to ask the right questions, listen to the silences and get to the sources.

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