Joy Wiltenburg

Joy Wiltenburg

“A Period of Transformation”: Joy Wiltenburg on Her Growth and that of the College in Her Time on the Faculty -- Memory #40 of 100  

Today’s Project 100 memory comes from Joy Wiltenburg.  She was born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York.  Her father was a Lutheran minister and later administrator of a nursing home.  Her mother was an elementary school teacher.  She has three older brothers.  She went to Lutheran elementary school and then the Bronx High School of Science, a great public school, but getting there took 90 minutes each way by bus and subway.  She was active for the school newspaper in high school and then became editor of the newspaper as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester.  In fact, she met her husband, Rick Womer, at the newspaper.  She began college majoring in biology, but she had a transformative class on the French Revolution taught by Bob Kreiser in her first year.  Somehow, he did not get tenure even though his first book was published by Princeton University Press.  In high school, she thought history was a bit boring, but this class was fantastic and focused on changing interpretations of the French Revolution.  They read Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine and then later differing interpretations all the way up to the Marxist historians. She soon switched to majoring in history, and she had some great seminar courses on topics like 19th century England and Early Modern Europe.  For a while she considered law school, but she really enjoyed historical research.  So, she decided to pursue graduate study, first getting a Master’s degree at the University of Rochester, and then earning a doctorate at the University of Virginia.  During her time at Virginia, she switched from focusing on Victorian Britain to Early Modern Europe due to the intellectual excitement generated by Eric Midelfort, a famous historian of witchcraft.  He gathered those who were interested in Early Modern European history, and they formed such a strong bond under his guidance that they are still in touch today.  Professor Midelfort allowed Joy to work on a dissertation project that many others would have thought impossible, a comparative study of street literature in early modern Germany and Britain.  Joy was uncertain about teaching as a career, having had a less than great experience as a teaching assistant.  Her first job after finishing her doctorate was editing the William Penn Papers, and she then taught as adjunct faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.  In the seven years after she graduated from Virginia in 1984, she applied only for select jobs to local colleges or amazing jobs farther afield.  One of the places that she applied was Glassboro State College.  In the late summer of 1991, she received a phone call from Richard Porterfield who was desperate to replace four suddenly retired full-time faculty.  After some hesitation over the challenging teaching load, she accepted the offer and became one of four faculty members hired at that time on one-year contracts.  She applied and received one of the tenure-track jobs that year, along with Edward Wang and Corinne Blake.  In 2021, she retired after thirty years at Rowan.  She has continued to be active, publishing her fourth book, taking art classes, and spending time with her husband and new grandbaby. 

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Glassboro State College was a shock to the system because the teaching load was four courses per semester, and I had only taught one course at a time previously.  It took me a while to learn how to manage this challenge.  David Applebaum and Gary Hunter provided great mentorship in helping me to design classes that worked for Rowan students.  In fact, all of my faculty colleagues were supportive of me during this time. They were very happy to have new faculty in the Department, as there had been few hires in the previous decade.  After a couple of years, I began to really enjoy teaching at Rowan, with classes that aligned more with my own expertise. Some of my favorites have been my classes on the history of witch hunting and the history of crime. I've also really enjoyed teaching about European Women's history, the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment. The History Department has been a great environment to work in, with wonderful colleagues who share a real commitment to learning and teaching.

My first book, based on my doctoral dissertation, was published during my first year on the faculty. Despite the heavy teaching load, I was very fortunate to get support for my research. Early on I received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, which enabled me to embark on my next two book projects. Using summers, course releases, and sabbatical leaves, I was able to continue productive research. It was great good luck for me that during my time at the institution, Rowan moved toward ever-greater support for faculty research, reducing the teaching load while also maintaining its dedication to high-quality teaching. 

It's been exciting to be at Rowan during such a period of transformation. Within a year after I was hired, Glassboro State morphed into Rowan College, then later into Rowan University. Later I was sorry to see the College of Arts and Sciences divided up, separating the humanities and social sciences from colleagues in science and math. But fortunately, the History Department has grown and acquired an increasingly stellar faculty, with constantly expanding enrichment for Rowan history students.  I have many fond memories of my Rowan students as well.

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.