Prominent feminist literary theorist, Kate Stimpson, received an honorary degree in an academic convocation at Holy Cross on Tuesday, January 20, in the Ballroom of the Hogan Campus Center. She also delivered a lecture entitled, "Higher Education and Our Covenants."

Stimpson has had a long and distinguished career in academia, serving as an English professor at Barnard and Rutgers. Currently, she is University Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University.

Prior to that, she served for several years as the director of the fellows division of the MacArthur Foundation. She is the founding editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, a quarterly published by the University of Chicago Press. Stimpson also edited a book series about women in culture and society. She is the author of numerous papers and essays and has written two books: Class Notes, a novel (New York: Times Books, 1979; Avon Books, 1980), and Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Spaces (New York and London: Methuen, 1988).

Stimpson earned her AB magna cum laude with honors in English at Bryn Mawr College; an MA at Newnham College, Cambridge University; and a Ph.D. with distinction at Columbia University.