Elizabeth Amelia Hadley, a faculty member at Simmons College, has been appointed to hold the Jane Watson Irwin Visiting Professor of Women's Studies chair for the 2003-04 academic year at Hamilton College.
The Irwin professorship supports the needs and interests of women at Hamilton. It was established by Jane Irwin Droppa, a 1974 Kirkland College graduate, in memory of her mother, and then transferred to Hamilton College when the two colleges joined in 1978.
Hadley is associate professor and chair of African American studies at Simmons College, and has also taught at Northeastern University. She earned her Ph.D. at Indiana University and master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. Widely recognized as an expert on images of woman of color, Hadley is the author of Bessie Coleman: The Brownskin Lady Bird, the first full-length study of the early 20th century African American aviatrix. She has authored chapters in the books Africana: An Introduction and Study, Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video, The Readers Companion to U.S. Women's History and Multiple Voices in Film Criticism. She has also written biographic essays for Notable Black American Women. Book II, African American Women: A Biographical Dictionary and Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia.
Hadley is active in theatre and film and served as advisor, music consultant and narrator for the documentary As I Remember It: A Portrait of Dorothy West.
