Frances Gouda

Frances Gouda (June 8, 2019, Harlem, The Netherlands) was a Professor of Comparative History and Postcolonial History in American universities, and Associate Professor of Gender Studies at the Belle van Zuylen Institute of the University of Amsterdam from 1999 to her death.

Fluent in Dutch, English, French and Indonesian [Bahasa], she completed a Fulbright scholarship in Paris before accepting a position as assistant professor of history at Wellesley College in 1980. In 1988, she moved to Washington, DC, becoming administrator at the National Endowment for the Humanities and teaching part time at American University and George Washington University. While pursuing her own research, she was a fellow at the Wilson Center in 1990 – 1, before moving back to the Netherlands in 1999.

In 2013, Frances Gouda returned to the United States, first as the Erasmus Lecturer on the History and Civilization of the Netherlands and Flanders and visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. She then served as director of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, before retiringin Northern Netherlands in 2016. [see Ellen Fitzpatrick, Laura Frader, and Sonya Michel, ​“Frances Gouda (1950 – 2019)”, His​to​ri​ans​.org].

Publications

• Poverty and Political Culture: The Rhetoric of Social Welfare in the Netherlands and France, 1815 – 1854, Amsterdam, 1995.
• Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900 – 1942, Amsterdam, 1996; repr. Equinox Publishing, 2008, 304 p.
• [with Julia Clancy-Smith] Domesticating the Empire, 1998.
• [with Thijs Brocades Zaalberg] American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/​Indonesia, Routledge/​Amsterdam University Press, 382 p. ISBN 978 – 90535647902002.

Photo-portrait by Carmen Freudenthal.