Charlotte Bruner

Honored by: Debra F. Johnson

I would like to honor Charlotte Bruner for her dedication to her students and to the French culture and language.

7/1/96

Honored by: The Foreign Languages Department

(1917-1999)

As we honor the women whose achievements have merited inscription in the Plaza of Heroines, we might also pause to think on what it means in our pragmatic day and cynical age to be heroic, to act heroically. Heroism broadly defined would have to consist in the performing of deeds requiring courage and boldness. In doing that which fulfills a high purpose. In righting wrongs. In championing ideals. In consecrating one's life to a noble cause or endeavor.

The fields where heroism can test its mettle are many; for Charlotte Bruner the fields were the ones in which we all live and by which we all make and remake our cultural world: namely the field of language and the related field in which language is worked and reworked to reveal its truth: namely literature. With conviction and resolve, Charlotte Bruner taught the literatures of both women and third world peoples as a professor of French at Iowa State University where she taught in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures from 1954 to 1987. By her ground-breaking life's work in literary interpretation and editing, Charlotte Bruner has both confirmed the traditional notion of heroism and helped to redefine for all of us the meaning of the word "heroine."

Charlotte was courageous. With a B.A. from the University of Illinois and an M.A. from Columbia University, both in comparative literature, Charlotte taught African literature and Black literature in a time in our country's history when bigotry said that anything Black was backward, primitive, and ugly, and when academic snobbism said that such pursuits were a waste of time when compared to the "more elevating" study of the European classics. Charlotte saw through those racist stereotypes, enduring racist mockery and scorn, and now that the intellectual climate has made "ethnicity" and "multiculturalism" the watchwords of intellectual progressivism, history has proven her right all along.

Charlotte was bold. In 1969 she began a new ISU course on French African literature, the only one of its kind then in existence in the United States. As she taught, she built up the university's resources in African literature and today the Parks Library houses one of the nation's great collections in Francophone and Anglophone African writing accredited for graduate study and ranked as the second best in the United States.

Charlotte fulfilled a high purpose. In 1971 she and her husband David, professor of English at ISU, were awarded the university's first joint faculty improvement leave, which enabled them to travel to Africa, England, and France in order to study, meet with, and interview African writers. One of the outcomes of their collaboration was the 39 half-hour conversations on African literature that they aired on WOI radio from 1974 to 1975 in a program called "Talking Sticks." In those conversations, Charlotte and her husband introduced and read African literature to a wide audience of Iowa listeners.

Charlotte righted wrongs. Before it became trendy and politically correct, Charlotte read, wrote, and translated literature by third world women about which virtually nothing was known at that time in the U.S. Charlotte did her part in correcting the centuries-old neglect of women writers by publishing some 50 articles and translations, many of them on women’s subjects. Drawing on her broad-ranging research in African literature and in renewed collaboration with husband David, she created the weekly WOI radio series First Person Feminine. Each program was devoted to a single writer with brief readings of her texts, followed by discussion between Charlotte and David. First Person Feminine continued for six years between 1980 and 1986. Many universities including the Sorbonne in Paris have purchased the tapes of the programs produced by the Bruners between 1974 and 1987.

Charlotte championed ideals. Women writers in Africa-laboring under the triple onus of being women and being Black and calling a third world country their home--had few outlets for publishing and disseminating their works. Indicative of a structure of injustice that has disadvantaged women economically and culturally throughout the third world, Charlotte played a major part in making the voices of female African writers heard. She edited two widely-read anthologies of stories and novel excerpts by African women: Unwinding Threads was published in 1983, and African Women's Writing in 1993, both by the Heinemann Press.

Charlotte consecrated her life to another noble cause and that was to promote the understanding of African Asian and Latin American cultures among Iowa students. As a founding faculty member in the first Third World Cultures course for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ISU, Charlotte developed the curriculum, lectures, discussions, performances, and other activities that brought Iowa students into other ways of life and other patterns of thought. Among the many innovations she introduced into wrongs. In championing ideals. In consecrating one's life to a noble cause or endeavor. The fields where heroism can test its mettle are many; for Charlotte Bruner the fields were the ones in which we all live and by which we all make and remake our cultural world: namely the field of language and the related field in which language is worked and reworked to reveal its truth: namely literature. With conviction and resolve, Charlotte Bruner taught the literatures of both women and third world peoples as a professor of French at Iowa State University where she taught in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures from 1954 to 1987. By her ground-breaking life's work in literary interpretation and editing, Charlotte Bruner has both confirmed the traditional notion of heroism and helped to redefine for all of us the meaning of the word "heroine."

Charlotte was courageous. With a B.A. from the University of Illinois and an M.A. from Columbia University both in comparative literature, Charlotte taught African literature and Black literature in a time in our country's history when bigotry said that anything Black was backward primitive and ugly and when academic snobbism said that such pursuits were a waste of time when compared to the "more elevating" study of the European classics. Charlotte saw through those racist stereotypes, enduring racist mockery and scorn and now that the intellectual climate has made "ethnicity" and "multiculturalism" the watchwords of intellectual progressivism, history has proven her right all along.

Charlotte was bold. In 1969 she began a new ISU course on French African literature, the only one of its kind then in existence in the United States. As she taught, she built up the university's resources in African literature, and today the Parks Library houses one of the nation's great collections in Francophone and Anglophone African writing accredited for graduate study and ranked as the second best in the United States. Charlotte fulfilled a high purpose. In 1971 she and her husband David, professor of English at ISU, were awarded the university's first joint faculty improvement leave which enabled them to travel to Africa, England and France to study, meet with and interview African writers. One of the outcomes of their collaboration was the 39 half-hour conversations on African literature that they aired on WOI radio from 1974 to 1975 in a program called Talking Sticks. In those conversations, Charlotte and her husband introduced and read African literature to a wide audience of Iowa listeners.

Charlotte righted wrongs. Before it became trendy and politically correct, Charlotte read wrote and translated literature by third world women about which virtually nothing was known at that time in the U.S. Charlotte did her part in correcting the centuries-old neglect of women writers by publishing some 50 articles and translations, many of them on women’s subjects. Drawing on her broad-ranging research in African literature and in renewed collaboration with husband David, she created the weekly WOI radio series First Person Feminine. Each program was devoted to a single writer with brief readings of her texts followed by discussion between Charlotte and David. First Person Feminine continued for six years between 1980 and 1986. Many universities, including the Sorbonne in Paris, have purchased the tapes of the programs produced by the Bruners between 1974 and 1987.

Charlotte championed ideals. Women writers in Africa--laboring under the triple onus of being women and being Black and calling at third world country their home--had few outlets for publishing and disseminating their works. Indicative of a structure of injustice that has disadvantaged women economically and culturally throughout the third world, Charlotte played a major part in making the voices of female African writers heard. She edited two widely-read anthologies of stories and novel excerpts by African women: Unwinding Threads was published in 1983 and African Women's Writing in 1993, both by the Heinemann Press.

Charlotte consecrated her life to another noble cause, and that was to promote the understanding of African Asian and Latin American cultures among Iowa students. As a founding faculty member in the first Third World Cultures course for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ISU, Charlotte developed the curriculum, lectures, discussions, performances and other activities that brought Iowa students into other ways of life and other patterns of thought. Among the many innovations she introduced into

Paver Inscription:

Foreign Language
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