IN MEMORY OF WIEBKE IPSEN
1970 - 2009

Wiebke Ipsen, Assistant Professor in the University of Maine History Department since 2006, passed away on January 27, 2009 at the age of 38. Ipsen received undergraduate degrees from Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, and both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of San Francisco and San Francisco State University. She earned her doctorate from the University of California-Irvine in 2005. Professor Ipsen taught a series of undergraduate history courses related to Latin America, with particular expertise in issues related to gender and nation-building in Brazil in the late 19th century.

The Wiebke Ipsen Memorial Scholarship Fund has been established at the University of Maine, supported by financial gifts from family, friends, and colleagues.  Award preference will be given to students conducting research in gender history or Latin American history, both areas that Professor Ipsen dedicated her professional life to studying. 

 


                                          IN MEMORY OF MARLI F. WEINER
1953 - 2009

Marli F. Weiner, Adelaide & Alan Bird Professor of History at the University of Maine, died on Monday, March 2, 2009, at the age of 56.  Professor Weiner had been a member of the History Department at the University of Maine since 1988.  She received her B.A. in 1974 from The Johns Hopkins University, her M.A. in 1976 from Sarah Lawrence College, and her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1986.  Weiner was the author of Plantation Women: South Carolina Mistresses and Slaves, 1830-1880 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), and "A Heritage of Woe:" The Civil War Diary of Grace Brown Elmore (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997).  She also edited Of Place and Gender: Women in Maine History (Orono: University of Maine Press, 2005).  At the time of her death, Weiner was completing a third monograph entitled Defining the Body: Race, Sex, and Place in the Antebellum South.

Professor Weiner's academic specialties included nineteenth-century U.S. history, women's history, the South, and African-American history.  She taught a number of courses in these subjects in both the undergraduate and graduate programs at UMaine, and was a devoted mentor to many graduate students.  Weiner was also extremely active with the Maine Humanities Council.  Colleagues in the History Department are also planning the establishment of a scholarship fund in Prof. Weiner's memory, with more details to be available as soon as possible.