Martha Nell Smith (LC’77) is a scholar who has focused her career on the life and work of Emily Dickinson, on American poetry, and on feminist and queer theory and criticism.

In 2009 the Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) of Rutgers University honored Smith as a Distinguished Alumna. Smith additionally earned a Master of Arts (1982) and a Ph.D (1985), both in English, from Rutgers’ Graduate School-New Brunswick.

As of 2021, Smith is a Professor of English, Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Her numerous print publications include five books on Dickinson:

• Rowing in Eden: Rereading Emily Dickinson (1992)

• Comic Power in Emily Dickinson, coauthored with Suzanne Juhasz and Cristanne Miller (1993)

• Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Dickinson, coauthored with Ellen Louise Hart (1998)

• A Companion to Emily Dickinson (2008), co-edited with Mary Loeffelholz

• Emily Dickinson: A User’s Guide (2012, with a revised edition planned for publication in 2022)

Smith also has written more than 40 articles and essays in American Literature, Studies in the Literary Imagination, South Atlantic Quarterly, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Profils Americains, San Jose Studies, The Emily Dickinson Journal, and A Companion to Digital Humanities.

Smith was an early proponent of using technology to advance scholarship, and in 1994 she began the Dickinson Electronic Archives.

At the Digital Humanities 2009 conference, hosted by MITH, Smith said: “Content counts first, and we use the technology, the technology does not use us.”

“I am really interested in how we can import literary theory and philosophy and actually do something innovative in terms of knowledge-building. So as an editor I’m really interested in ways we can import social editing into scholarly editing.”

In 2010, Smith was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland. In 2011 she was appointed ADVANCE Professor in the College of Arts and Humanities and in 2012 was appointed an ADVANCE Fellow.  In May 2011, Smith was voted Chair-Elect of the University of Maryland Senate, and became Chair for the 2012-2013 term.

Smith transferred to Livingston College from Rutgers College as a senior, taking 39 credits at Livingston in the 1976-1977 academic year. In a 2009 interview and profile for the Distinguished Alumni Award, Smith says: “I often refer to the year I was at Livingston as the year I learned more than anyplace else.

“That passion and that belief that learning is crucial, vital and important, I carry with me to this day.

“Be generous, follow your intellectual passion, not what is trending but follow what you really want to do, and specifically for Livingston, never forget the legacy of serious-minded politics. … Be great citizens, be fabulous students all throughout the rest of your life.”

Follow Martha Nell Smith on Twitter.

Watch the LAA’s interview and video tribute to Smith (3 minutes, 13 seconds), embedded on this page, or open in a new window.

Photos: (top) Courtesy of University of Maryland; (bottom) From the 1977 Livingston College yearbook, The Rock, Volume II.

Radio journalist Marla Diamond (LC’92) has been a mainstay on the WCBS Newsradio 880 staff since 1997.

In 2009, the Livingston Alumni Association honored Diamond as a Distinguished Alumna.

Diamond joined WCBS as its New Jersey correspondent and currently covers New York City for the station.

Diamond’s radio career started at New Brunswick’s WCTC-AM 1450, where she served as a street reporter and anchor. She later served as morning anchor of WCTC’s sister station WMGQ-FM 98.3.

Bruce Johnson remembered Diamond coming to him as a college student seeking a radio news internship.

“She seemed beyond her years as a college student, and I was struck by her immediately,” Johnson said in a 2009 interview for LAA’s tribute to Diamond.. “She … just did everything exceedingly well,” said Johnson, then the news and sports director for Greater Media New Jersey, which included WCTC, WMGQ and four other radio stations.

In another interview, Tim Scheld, director of news and programming at WCBS Newsradio, calls Diamond one of the station’s “best street reporters.”

“She’s not afraid to get down and dirty. She’s not afraid what alley she’s going to walk in,” Scheld said.

“She knows how to tell a story, and there aren’t that many people left in this world and in this business that can tell the story the way that the street reporters at CBS do.”

For about a year, Diamond worked as media director for a hospital but, as she writes on her WCBS profile page, found that radio was indeed her calling, and successfully “begged for my job back.”

“I have had the privilege to be a part of some of the city’s biggest breaking news stories,” Diamond writes. “I am often brought to tears by New Yorkers’ random acts of kindness and courage. But I really enjoy the offbeat, the people who give this city its pulse and craziness.”

Diamond has won numerous awards in her career at WCBS, including the Art Athens Award for General Excellence in radio reporting.

Watch the LAA’s interview and video tribute to Diamond (2 minutes, 24 seconds), embedded on this page, or open in a new window.

Follow Marla Diamond on Twitter.

Photos of Marla Diamond: (top) Courtesy of Diamond; (bottom) From the 1992 Livingston College yearbook, Diversity: A Style of Our Own, Volume Two.

Francoise Jacobsohn (LC’79) has been an advocate for women and workers since the 1970s.

In 2009, the Livingston Alumni Association (LAA) honored her as a Livingston College Distinguished Alumna.

As of 2023, Jacobsohn is the Court Compliance Officer with Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association Local Union No. 28 in New York City. In this role, she is responsible for ensuring that Local 28, and contractors employing its members, comply with a court order mandating workplaces free from discrimination.

She also has served as a member of the New York City Mayor’s Commission on Construction Opportunity, established in March 2005, to ensure that women and minorities gain access to work in the construction trades.

Jacobsohn previously served as the Project Manager at two organizations — Equal Rights Advocates and Equality Works — seeking to expand opportunities for women. Equality Works is Legal Momentum’s Economic Justice Program focusing on expanding women’s participation in high-paying non-traditional employment.

Jacobsohn is a former president of the National Organization for Women-New York City (NOW-NYC). She also has worked on an institutional and community-building project for public education in Upper Manhattan.

At France’s Political Science Institute, Jacobsohn taught a class on “Women, the Law and Public Opinion.” She also worked for a European nonprofit focused on violence against women at the workplace, and helped set up one of the early battered women’s shelters in New Jersey in the late 1970s.

“My everyday life is talking to women on the ground, finding out what needs to be done and figuring out how to get it done, and that is completely Livingston,” Jacobsohn said in a 2009 interview. “You need to know who the people are, what people are doing on the ground, what are they thinking, what are their needs, what do they want. And if you don’t ask there, then the policy you get is not going to really look like what you want it to look like.”

She earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from Rutgers’ Livingston College in 1979, and a master of public administration degree in 2003 from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Watch the LAA’s interview and video tribute to Jacobsohn (2 minutes, 9 seconds), embedded on this page, or open in a new window.

Photos of Francoise Jacobsohn: (top) Courtesy of Jacobsohn; (bottom) From the 1980 Livingston College yearbook, The Rock, Volume IV. (This yearbook included photos of graduates from both 1979 and 1980.)