Carolyn R. Swift papers (MSS-0150)

Biographical/Historical Note

Carolyn Ruth Swift (1928-2013) (also published under the name Carolyn R. Lenz, or Carolyn R. Swift Lenz) was a professor of English and Women’s Studies at Rhode Island College, an advocate for political causes such as ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), and a pioneering scholar of feminist Shakespeare scholarship. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from University of Chicago in 1948 and her M.A. in English Literature from Columbia University in 1950. She taught high school at Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, CT and Prospect Hill School in New Haven, CT, and at public schools in Swansea, MA and Cranston, RI until she earned her Ph.D. in English from Brown University in 1973 and joined the faculty at Rhode Island College.

In her academic career, she was a scholar of feminist Shakespeare studies. She co-edited The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare (1980), an anthology of recent feminist scholarship on Shakespeare, with Gayle Green and Carol Thomas Neely. In 1976 she organized a special meeting at 1976’s MLA convention entitled “Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare” which heavily influenced a 1981-1982 two-part special issue of Women’s Studies, edited by Gayle Greene, on feminist Shakespeare scholarship.

She was an advocate for civil rights of minority groups and was a founder and twice chairperson of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. She was a member of the Rhode Island Congress of Racial Equality, Senior Action in a Gay Environment, Rhode Island Senior Agenda, Massachusetts Senior Action Council, and the Gray Panthers, an organization that targeted intersectional political issues around ageism.

Swift grew up in Bloomfield, NJ, and was married to John W. Lenz for 28 years until their divorce in 1979. She had two sons, Dr. Peter S. Lenz and Thomas M. Lenz. Edith A. Kur (1936-2023) was her partner of 31 years until Swift’s death in 2013.