Peacock, Sandra J. 1955–

PERSONAL:

Born 1955; married Thomas W. Africa. Education: Franklin and Marshall College, B.A., 1977; Sarah Lawrence College, M.A., 1979; State University of New York—Binghamton, Ph.D., 1986.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30460-8054; fax: 912-478-0377. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator. Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, chair of department of history, 2002-08, and associate professor.

WRITINGS:

Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1988.

The Theological and Ethical Writings of Frances Power Cobbe, 1822-1904, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 2002.

(With Rebecca Shriver Davis) Judge Faye Sanders Martin: Head Full of Sense, Heart Full of Gold, Mercer University Press (Macon, GA), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including History of European Ideas, Modernism/Modernity, and Biography.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sandra J. Peacock is an associate professor and head of the department of history at Georgia Southern University. She obtained her B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College in 1977, then moved to Sarah Lawrence College for an M.A. in 1979, finally attending the State University of New York—Binghamton, where she completed her Ph.D. in 1986. She teaches courses in the "woman question" in Europe and modern European thought. Peacock explained in a statement posted on the Georgia Southern University, Department of History, Web site: "My main interests are in modern European women's history and intellectual history, and both my teaching and research concentrate on those two areas."

In Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self, Peacock writes of a prominent early-twentieth-century scholar of ancient religion. She analyzes Harrison's work, Peacock explained, "in the context of her life experience as a woman scholar in a field long dominated by men." Peacock's biography, wrote James P. Holoka in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, "is the first true attempt to write a full-dress life of Harrison based on available source material and the subject's own published works. But it is also keenly committed to a psychoanalytic approach."

Peacock looks at another prominent woman scholar in The Theological and Ethical Writings of Frances Power Cobbe, 1822-1904. While Cobbe is best remembered for her writings on feminist and women's issues in the nineteenth century, Peacock focuses on Cobbe's lesser-known writings on theology and ethics. Individual chapters cover such topics as "The Crisis of Faith," "Science, Anti-Evangelicalism, and Anticlericalism," "Race, Religion, and the Death of History," and "The Age of Science and the Death of Faith." In reaction to the faith of her parents, Cobbe wrote from a skeptical point of view. She found the Bible to be myth and Jesus to be an important spiritual teacher but not divine. While still believing in God, Cobbe advocated church reform to remove those aspects of Christianity she saw as illogical. "Peacock's thorough examination of Cobbe's unfolding ideas," Jacqueline R. De Vries wrote in Albion, "makes a significant and needed contribution to the growing body of literature on the history of women's theological writing."

With Rebecca Shriver Davis, Peacock wrote Judge Faye Sanders Martin: Head Full of Sense, Heart Full of Gold. Martin was born during the Great Depression in rural Georgia and became the first woman lawyer in her county. She later became the first woman chief circuit judge in Georgia. She was also the first woman judge in the state of Georgia to swear in her own daughter as an attorney. Peacock and Davis chronicle Martin's life story from her early days working on her family's tobacco farm in south Georgia, to working as a legal secretary while taking law classes at night, to becoming a partner in a law firm in her hometown. Additionally, the authors hoped, as they wrote in their introduction to the book, to "encourage other scholars to look beyond the experience of women lawyers in urban settings and large law firms to explore the lives of women lawyers in the South or in small towns or in small firms. Thus, we have appended to Faye's story an essay that juxtaposes her experiences against the backdrop of the larger national scene and the ordeals faced by other female pioneers in the legal profession who have been the focus of most scholarship to date." According to Virginia G. Drachman in the Journal of Southern History: "The authors reveal a woman who achieved the American dream of success."

Peacock explained in her statement posted on the Georgia Southern University, Department of History, Web site: "I am currently working on a study of Eliza Marian Butler, a twentieth-century British scholar of German language and literature who wrote a number of literary biographies of German writers between the 1920s and 1950s. She had conflicted emotions toward Germany and Germans, and I am interested in her use of biography to grapple with the difficulties of studying German culture at a time when anti-German sentiment characterized British society."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Albion, winter, 2004, Jacqueline R. De Vries, review of The Theological and Ethical Writings of Frances Power Cobbe, 1822-1904, p. 692.

American Historical Review, June, 1990, review of Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self, pp. 826-827.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2006, Virginia G. Drachman, review of Judge Faye Sanders Martin: Head Full of Sense, Heart Full of Gold, p. 231.

ONLINE

Bryn Mawr Classical Review,http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/ (June 14, 2003), James P. Holoka, review of Jane Ellen Harrison.

Edwin Mellen Press Web site,http://www.mellenpress.com/ (June 13, 2008), description of The Theological and Ethical Writings of Frances Power Cobbe, 1822-1904.

Georgia Southern University, Department of History, Web site,http://class.georgiasouthern.edu/ (May 14, 2008), personal statement posted by Peacock.