Scharff, Virginia

views updated

SCHARFF, Virginia
(Virginia Swift)

PERSONAL:

Female. Education: Yale University, B.A., 1974; University of California at Berkeley, M.J., 1977; University of Wyoming, M.A., 1981; University of Arizona, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Albuquerque, NM. Office—Department of History, University of New Mexico, 1104 Mesa Vista Hall, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1181. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, historian, consultant, and educator. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, professor of history, Women of the West chair, and director of the Center for the Southwest; Yale University, New Haven, CT, Howard R. Lamar Center, Frederick W. Beinecke Senior Research Fellow, 2003-04. Consultant on television programs and documentaries, including Biography of America, WGBH, Boston.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians, 2003; Society of American Historians, fellow.

WRITINGS:

"SALLY ALDER" MYSTERY NOVELS; UNDER NAME VIRGINIA SWIFT

Brown-Eyed Girl, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.

Bad Company, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2002.

Bye, Bye, Love, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Hello, Stranger, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

NONFICTION; UNDER NAME VIRGINIA SCHARFF

Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age, Free Press (New York, NY), 1991.

(With Michael Schaller and Robert D. Schulzinger) Present Tense: The United States since 1945, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1992, 2nd edition, 1996.

(With Michael Schaller and Robert D. Schulzinger) Coming of Age: America in the Twentieth Century, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1998.

(Editor) Seeing Nature through Gender, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2003.

Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author, novelist, educator, and historian Virginia Scharff is a professor of history. The author of both fiction and nonfiction, Scharff writes novels under the name Virginia Swift while reserving her own name for her nonfiction works of history and gender study.

In Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age, Scharff offers a "lively cultural history of the automobile age" in which she "demonstrates how gender not only affected the debate over who drove but influenced the automotive industry from the design department to the showroom floor," commented reviewer Sarah Stage in the Nation. Scharff points out that women in the United States were allowed to drive almost twenty years before they were allowed to vote. Although Victorian society was dubious about whether women belonged behind the wheel, and women drivers were largely ridiculed and disdained, the right of women to drive emerged with little contest or conflict. Although suffragists used the automobile to advance their cause, and women found that the mobility it provided allowed them to step outside the boundaries of the home, in large part "women used the auto to challenge the social limits of femininity," Stage observed. "The value of Scharff's work lies in its elucidations of such gender complexities as well as in its demonstrations of the extent to which the bifurcated gender categories of male-female permeate our conceptions even of artifacts and machines," commented Lois W. Banner in the Business History Review. Leah Rozen, writing in People, called Scharff's book "a well-written account of how women came to take the wheel."

Scharff explores another historical aspect of the connection between women and transportation in Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West. The essays in the book "tell the stories of women who traversed the West on their own terms," without following any precedents established by men, commented Stephen H. Peters in Library Journal. This independence from men, in connection with easy access to modes of transportation and established roadways, helped develop both the West as a region and the United States as a whole, Scharff asserts. Scharff profiles a number of historical women whose connection to the West and ability to move unfettered through it provides support for the book's thesis. Prominent among her subjects is Sacagawea, famed guide and translator for the Lewis and Clark expeditions. Other subjects include Grace Raymond Hebard, a geographer who mapped Wyoming for the U.S. surveyor general; Fabiola Cabeza, a home economist who traveled through New Mexico; and Pamela Des Barres, a rock groupie who pioneered the sexual revolution of the 1960s and helped turn the West, particularly California, into the cultural barometer of the nation. "Both scholars and novices will find their views of women and the West enriched by Scharff's account," noted Kathryn M. Daynes, writing in the Historian. "The landscape does indeed shift when women move."

In Scharff's ongoing series of mystery novels, written under the pseudonym Virginia Swift, each book takes its title from a chart-topping pop-music hit straight from the oldies station. Brown-Eyed Girl, the first novel in the series, introduces forty-five-year-old Sally Alder, a former country music singer and wild girl who, somewhat to her own surprise, has become a respected academic and professor at the University of Wyoming. Sally, also known as Mustang Sally, hasn't lost her singing chops, and she still plays guitar and sings in a local band. In her first outing, Sally is charged with sorting through the papers and archives of the reclusive Margaret Dunwoodie, Wyoming's most famous poet. To secure her position at the university, a chair endowed by Dunwoodie's estate, Sally agrees to live in the poet's house and write her biography. As Sally conducts her research, intriguing questions arise about Dunwoodie's past, not the least of which is how she managed to amass a huge fortune on a teacher's salary. Sally is bedeviled by continuing break-ins at the house, likely fortune hunters on the prowl for the stash of gold Krugerrands said to be stashed somewhere in the house. Sally is later dismayed when her car is vandalized with painted swastikas. Piecing Dunwoodie's well-hidden life together eventually reveals that the poet had an earlier, more interesting lifestyle that she kept carefully hidden from her contemporaries in Wyoming. "Swift develops her engaging tale gracefully, with a real feel for the atmosphere of its Wyoming setting," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

The second "Sally Alder" mystery, Bad Company, finds the ever-promiscuous Monette Bandy dead among the Laramie hills, discovered by Sally and her geologist boyfriend, Hawk Green. They report the find to sheriff Dickie Langham, who happens to be the dead woman's cousin. After the discovery, however, Sally herself seems to be the next target of murder. She receives threatening phone calls; she is pushed into the path of a raging and dangerous horse; and her house is broken into and vandalized. Sally has no idea what piece of information she has which might prompt unknown persons to wish her dead, but with the help of Hawk and her own well-honed sleuthing abilities, she is determined to find out. When Sally finds a connection between Monette and a shady land deal, things only get worse. "All told, this is a refreshing piece of work by a strong new talent," commented a Publishers Weekly critic.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2004, Connie Fletcher, review of Bye, Bye, Love, p. 70.

Business History Review, spring, 1992, Lois W. Banner, review of Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age, p. 190.

Economist, February 15, 2003, "Lonesome Doves: The Wild West," review of Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West.

Historian, winter, 2004, Kathryn M. Daynes, review of Twenty Thousand Roads, p. 847.

History: Review of New Books, spring, 2004, Karen Sayer, review of Seeing Nature through Gender, p. 119.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2002, review of Bad Company, p. 622; January 1, 2006, review of Hello, Stranger, p. 20.

Library Journal, April 1, 2000, Mary Margaret Benson, review of Brown-Eyed Girl, p. 133; June 1, 2002, Rex E. Klett, review of Bad Company, p. 200; December, 2002, Stephen H. Peters, review of Twenty Thousand Roads, p. 152; October 1, 2004, Rex E. Klett, review of Bye, Bye, Love, p. 62; February 1, 2006, Jo Ann Vicarel, review of Hello, Stranger, p. 58.

Nation, November 25, 1991, Sarah Stage, review of Taking the Wheel, p. 680.

New York Times, March 17, 1991, Joe Queenan, review of Taking the Wheel.

People, July 15, 1991, Leah Rozen, review of Taking the Wheel, p. 30.

Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2000, review of Brown-Eyed Girl, p. 74; May 13, 2002, review of Bad Company, p. 55; September 27, 2004, review of Bye, Bye, Love, p. 40; December 19, 2005, review of Hello, Stranger, p. 43.