In honor of Women’s History Month, Ƶ Ƶ Today will be looking at the accomplishments of Ƶ Ƶ women who have advanced the cause of women, broken glass ceilings and left a lasting impact on women’s history.
A trailblazer for LGBTQ+ rights, the late Dolores Noll, Ph.D., Professor Emeritas of English, was one of Ƶ’s first openly gay professors when she came out in 1971.
Noll came to Ƶ Ƶ in 1961 as an instructor in the Department of English and became an assistant professor upon completing a doctorate.
In 1971, she helped to form Ƶ Ƶ’s first LGBTQ+ student organization, the Ƶ Gay Liberation Front, which held its meetings at her home. Noll was the founding faculty advisor to the organization, now known as , making it the country’s oldest continuously operating LGBTQ+ student organization.
In 1972, Noll became the first professor to teach a gay and lesbian course at Ƶ Ƶ. The course, “Gay Womanhood,” was taught in the Experimental College. At the time, it was one of only a few gay courses taught in universities nationwide.
Born Aug. 14, 1930, in Fairfield, Iowa, and raised in Berea, Ƶucky, Noll received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida in 1951 and earned a master’s degree in 1954 and a doctorate in 1964, both from the University of Ƶucky.
Noll served as assistant to the chair of English from 1978 until her retirement in 1984. She was well-published in scholarly journals of both medieval literature and LGBTQ studies. She taught three different LGBTQ studies courses at Ƶ Ƶ,
Her role in establishing and co-coordinating the national Gay Caucus for the Modern Language Association was recognized with the establishment of the Crompton-Noll award, which recognizes the work of LGBTQ scholarship within the MLA.
She and her partner of 37 years, Pat Hatfield, met at Ƶ Ƶ.
In 2010, as Professor Emeritus of English, Noll was honored with Ƶ Ƶ’s first-ever Diversity Trailblazer Award.
In January 2019, she passed away at the age of 88.