Early life
Barbara Sue Heldt was born on 2 February 1940 at the Sydenham hospital in New York City. Her mother,Margery Sloss,was a New Yorker,while her father Dr John H. Heldt,was from Berlin,Germany. [2] Her brother,John,was born in 1942. [3]
She attended the Woodmere Academy,then took her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College,where she was a Durant scholar. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. She then returned to New York to study for a M.A. degree at Columbia University. [4]
Heldt married E. William Monter on 19 June 1963 at Woodmere,Long Island. [5] They had two children:Gustav and Elizabeth. [6]
Having obtained a Ford Foundation Fellowship,she went to the University of Chicago to work towards a doctoral degree in Slavic languages. [5]
She has been married to Gerald Stanton Smith since 1982.
Career
In 1961,between her graduation and starting the master's programme at Columbia,Heldt worked for the US Information Agency in the USSR. She next guided French pharmacists around the US. The money from this work funded the first year of her M.A. [7]
In 1966–67,Heldt studied in Moscow under the Fulbright Program. The next year,her doctoral degree was awarded by the University of Chicago and she was hired as an assistant professor in her department,teaching Russian language and literature. In 1976,she joined the University of British Columbia. [7]
In 1988,the Association for Women in Slavic Studies,formed the previous year,established a series of prizes,one of which,funded by the Association for Slavic,East European,and Eurasian Studies was named the Heldt Prize in her honour. [7]
Heldt became Professor Emerita at the University of British Columbia in 1996. [8]
Research
Heldt translated Karolina Pavlova's novel A Double Life in 1978. Pavlova,a nineteenth century Russian poet,had been celebrated in her youth but disdained and disregarded later on,and fell out of the canon in Soviet times. Heldt's translation brought new audiences to Pavlova's work,while the feminist perspective she brought into Pavlova's life and times attracted further study by feminist researchers. [9]
Heldt's book Terrible Perfection:Women and Russian Literature (1987) is considered the first view of Russian literary history through feminist theory.
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