Emeritus and Energized

For UW faculty, retirement can mean many things. More time to work in the garden. A chance to spend time with the grandchildren. Or, if you’re like Dan Waugh, an opportunity for extended travel in Sweden, China, Iran, and Turkey while pursuing three separate research projects.

“Yes, there is life after retirement, though sometimes I think it will be the death of me,” jokes Waugh, professor emeritus of history, international studies, and Slavic languages and literatures, who retired in June 2006.

For Waugh and others like him, still driven to do research, retirement can be tremendously productive. “Being emeritus is, in a sense, being liberated,” says Waugh. Gone are the faculty responsibilities, from committee meetings to course preparation to grading papers. Gone is the pressure to publish another paper or write another book. “It means you can tackle stuff you might not have done previously,” he says. “If you stick your neck out, the worst you can do is embarrass yourself.”

Recognizing the productivity of retired faculty, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation created the Mellon Emeritus Fellowship, awarded to outstanding scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who, at the time of receiving the fellowship, are officially retired but continue to be active in research. Since 2007, four A&S emeritus faculty, including Waugh, have received the fellowship. 

Waugh’s Mellon-funded research concerns the Silk Road, a web of trade routes across Eurasia that dates back more than two millennia. He has taught courses about the Silk Road, created a comprehensive website on the subject, serves as editor of the Silkroad Foundation’s journal, and speaks on the topic to general audiences. Now he hopes to write a book that provides a broad introduction. But while his knowledge of the eastern Silk Road is considerable, he wants to learn more about the West Asian portion before writing. To this end, he’ll use his Mellon funding to visit Iran in April and spend four months in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East in the fall. 

Jere Bacharach, professor emeritus of history, also has used his Mellon fellowship to cover travel expenses, with some funds remaining to hire a graduate student assistant. His research requires spending time in Kuwait, England, Germany, and Cairo—the latter his home for six months each year since retiring in 2006. 

Bacharach’s Mellon-funded research is a study of monetary changes in fifteenth century Egypt after Venetian coinage appeared there. It was his dissertation topic many years ago, and he’s planning to expand on it and write a book. Beyond financial support, the Mellon fellowship led to his appointment as an associate research fellow at the American Research Center in Egypt, which has provided beneficial connections. 

“I’ve never been so busy,” says Bacharach. “I’ve done more projects and given more presentations in more places than I ever did pre-retirement.” 

Bacharach has Sue-Ellen Jacobs to thank for encouraging him to apply for the Mellon Emeritus Fellowship. Jacobs, professor emeritus of women studies, became the College’s first fellow in 2007. Although she retired from the UW in 2004, her retirement didn’t quite stick, as she was recruited to develop a program in Pueblo Indian studies at the Northern Pueblos Institute (and later American Indian Center) at Northern New Mexico College. “I agreed to do it half time, but soon discovered that it was impossible to do it in 20 hours a week,” says Jacobs, who stayed with the program from January 2005 through June 2009. 

Jacobs has spent years studying Pueblo culture, her main focus being the preservation of the endangered Tewa language and culture of the Ohkay Pueblo of New Mexico. Mellon funds have enabled the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment and software to produce a multimedia DVD for the project, which Jacobs hopes to complete later this year. “I really am ready to retire from this now,” she says, “but until I have the new DVD set in my hand, I will not be done.” She remains a research professor in Pueblo Indian studies to facilitate use of her Mellon funds until completion of the project.

The College’s fourth Mellon Emeritus Fellow, Paul Brass, has been retired for more than a decade but has never stopped pursuing his research. A professor emeritus of political science and South Asian studies, Brass has focused on India for most of his career. Previous projects have explored many aspects of politics in India, most recently a series of works on violence, but now he has moved on to something quite different: a series of volumes on the politics of Northern India from 1937 through 2004. 

“Volume one is mostly done,” says Brass, “and contract negotiations are in progress with Oxford University Press in India. The Mellon Fellowship allowed me to go back to India, catch up on what’s been happening since last I was there, and do personal interviews.” 

The impetus for the project? A substantial collection of private political papers, filling three large boxes, given to Brass in 1983 by a prominent North Indian politician, now deceased. The politician hoped that Brass, with whom there was a personal rapport, would eventually write his biography. “The boxes remained unopened for years because I was working on other research,” says Brass. “I finally went through the papers in 2005 and started to write.” The project quickly expanded beyond one politician’s life story to an ambitious political history of the region.

Brass hopes to write a six-volume series. He realizes it will take years, and he’s fine with that. More than fine, actually. “Retirement has been a blessing, “he says. “It’s freed up my time so I can do what I want all day. And I’ve never wanted to do anything else besides what I’ve been doing—writing and publishing.”

One suspects that many emeritus faculty share that sentiment. They quietly continue their work, with or without Mellon support.

“Professors who love research don’t just stop with retirement,” says Waugh. “If anything, I have more pent-up energy to read and write. The brain’s still active, the body’s still in reasonably good shape, and I have the luxury of time to follow the things I really want to learn about. Just because you reach age 65 doesn’t mean you stop learning.”