Bookplates

The Sydna Weiss Memorial Book Fund

July 1, 1992

This fund was established in memory of Professor Sydna Weiss by her mother and brother. It supports the purchase of books in German and/or Women’s Studies.

Sydna Stern Weiss, known to her friends affectionately as Bunny, was born in Schenectady, NY, in 1940. After quickly working her way through the Schenectady public school system, she entered Vassar College at the age of 16 and earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. It was, however, her growing interest in German language and literature at Vassar that was to become the decisive turn in her professional life.

During her Vassar years Sydna spent a summer at the Shakespearean School at Stratford-on-Avon in England. After leaving Vassar, she was awarded an NDEA fellowship and studied for two years at Brown University. Later, having earned a Dank Stipendium given by the German government, she studied at the University of Frieburg in western Germany for a year and a half. After teaching German at Manhattanville College for three years, she was awarded both NDEA and graduate fellowships at Princeton University where she received her Ph.D. in 1975.

Sydna arrived on the Hill as a member of the faculty in 1974, and her impact was soon felt. She was the first woman to be granted tenure at Hamilton and an ardent supporter of women’s concerns in an almost all-male environment. One of the founding members of the Faculty for Women’s Concerns, she strove tirelessly sto improve the environment for all Hamilton women: students, staff, administrators and faculty alike.

Her dedication to teaching was well known, most of all, of course, by students who felt the extraordinary energy with which her classrooms were charged. She genuinely loved teaching and all her students, always sharing happily in their triumphs, as well as being there to console when needed. She was also an important force for change off the Hill, especially as a founding and steering committee member of the Coalition of Women in German. One WIG project she authored was German and Women’s Studies: New Directions in Literary and Interdisciplinary Course Approaches. This volume was particularly influential in demonstrating the ways in which faculty could encourage the development of innovative courses about women and foster cooperation between programs in German and women’s studies. 

Sydna’s scholarship was far-ranging in scope. Her initial interests and training lay in the areas of the German Romantic period and the interrelationship of scientists and society (for which she was awarded a Danforth Foundation fellowship in 1978). On her own, she early discovered the benefits of reading with a feminist perspective. At the time of her death, Sydna had prepared two talks in matters as diverse as Christa Wolf’s study of the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the notion of the journey in romantic literature. Perhaps closest to her heart, however, was her unfinished monograph, Woman to Woman: The Fabric of Our Lives, a study of the relationships between mothers and daughters, especially as they sustain and reinforce each other.

NOTE: This biography was found on Hamilton’s website.