A scholar and feminist who taught at Stanford, Boston University and UC-Santa Cruz, Ellen Hawkes was also an investigative and biographical journalist, delving into the history of the Gallo empire in California's wine country as well as the history of the women's movement. She was fascinated by the life and work of Virginia Woolf and co-founded the country's first newsletter devoted to Woolf's writings.
Ellen Goodrich Hawkes, PhD '75, died on May 23 at her home in Campbell, Calif. She was 70.
After attending Radcliffe College and graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in English literature in 1967, Hawkes received a Fulbright scholarship to study at Cambridge University. She went on to teach at Stanford in the modern thought and literature department, where she earned her doctorate in 1975.
Hawkes wrote her dissertation on Virginia Woolf's feminism in her novels and essays. During this same period she came into contact with other "Woolfians," like-minded scholars dedicated to studying the writer's work. At a seminar hosted by the Modern Language Association, a group of four met to discuss the idea of launching a newsletter focused on Woolf's body of work. The Virginia Woolf Miscellany, still in publication today, was founded by J.J. Wilson, '57 (Janice Luebbermann at Stanford), now professor emerita of English at Sonoma State University, and the first issue appeared in 1973. In addition to Wilson and Hawkes, its editors included Lucio Ruotolo (a longtime professor at Stanford who died in 2003) and Margaret Comstock, PhD '75.
Says Wilson, "The Virginia Woolf Miscellany came about before the Internet as a much-needed way for 'Woolfians' to share our ideas. Ellen was not only passionate about Woolf; she was a vocal feminist and a true investigative reporter. Her book on the Gallo brothers was controversial and may have even put her life in danger. But it was a story she wanted to tell."
After teaching English at Boston University, Hawkes left academia to devote herself to writing. In 1983 she co-authored Shadow of the Moth: A Novel of Espionage with Virginia Woolf, followed by Feminism on Trial: The Ginny Foat Case and the Future of the Women's Movement. In 1993 she published Blood and Wine: The Unauthorized Story of the Gallo Wine Empire, a frank portrait of multimillionaire wine king Ernest Gallo, which intimated that brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo may have conspired to deceive their younger brother, Joseph, out of his rightful inheritance. Hawkes also freelanced for several national and international publications, including Ladies' Home Journal, Paris Match and Ms. In 2002, she returned to teaching, taking a position at UC-Santa Cruz.
Hawkes is survived by her twin brother, Michael, and younger brother, Daniel.
Julie Muller Mitchell, '79, is a writer in San Francisco.
