Among Andersen's strong interests are women's issues and sailing, and she has combined the two in On Land and On Sea. Women's issues always have been a basis for her research and writing, and when Andersen married her husband Richard Rosenfeld 23 years ago, she was converted from a landlubber to an enthusiastic sailor.
“All I could do then was swim,” she recalled, but Richard taught her how to sail, and she also took several qualifying courses in boating. Like any avid sailor, she counts the days each spring until their boat, Blew Bayou, is in the water, and they can sail the Chesapeake. “I also discovered I could write better about women and the water when I was on board the boat,” Andersen said.
Not only were the Rosenfeld family sailors, Andersen discovered, but Richard's grandfather, Morris, and father, Stanley, and uncles, David and William, were world-renowned yachting photographers, known for their dramatic and striking maritime images. They covered almost a century of the America's Cup races until 1995. The Rosenfeld Collection, dating from 1881 to the present, numbers close to 1 million images and is now owned and housed in the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Conn.
The Rosenfelds chronicled other activities of 20th-century life, as well, and also were commercial photographers to “make a living,” according to Stanley Rosenfeld. “The photographs are stunningly beautiful,” Andersen, who uses her married name Rosenfeld as author of the book, said. From the collection she has culled photographs of women in action--as sailors, athletes, aviators, telephone operators, health workers, volunteers, suffragettes, society matrons and others.
The book is divided into seven chapters, which reveal how American women and girls lived, played and worked. Andersen has written introductory essays to each chapter, putting it in context in terms of women's history in the United States during the last century.
The book offers a spectrum of photographs including the cover illustration of Phyllis Sopwith in gauntlets, scarf, hat and blazer, at the helm of Endeavor II, women patients and their babies in a charity ward, a 1917 parade of Red Cross workers, teenagers in their swamped dinghy on Long Island Sound, barefooted Chinese women sitting on the ground making sails and perfectly coiffed models in bathing suits, advertising outboard motors in the 1950s.
Many of the water photographs were taken from the family's specially designed, working boat, Foto. Foto III is housed in a wooden boat museum in Oxford, Md.
In conclusion, Andersen writes, “This book honors those achievements--and the achievements of all women who work in worlds where they challenge old ways, navigate tricky waters, set new marks and chart new courses.”
The book received kudos from reviewer, Carol Kimball, in the Mystic newspaper, The Day. Calling the book “thoroughly enjoyable,” Kimball wrote, “It took a sociologist interested in the study of women to ferret out these images from the overwhelming thousands in the collection....The author has provided a sprightly introduction to each of the seven chapters. As a sociologist and feminist scholar, she neatly interprets what we are seeing, although as she reminds us the photographs speak for themselves.”
Andersen is the author of Thinking About Women: Perspectives on Sex and Gender, now in its eighth edition; and coauthor or coeditor of Race, Class and Gender, in its fifth edition; Understanding A Diverse Society, in its fourth edition and others. Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Society: The Changing Landscape, is written with Elizabeth Higginbotham, UD professor of sociology, and will soon be published in its second edition.
Since joining the UD faculty in 1974, Andersen has served as the interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and as vice provost for academic affairs and has received numerous honors in her field and for teaching. She is a graduate of Georgia State University and received her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Article by Sue Moncure