Northampton, MA – Elizabeth Victoria Spelman
Born April 3, 1945 – Died December 26, 2025
Vicky Spelman passed away peacefully in her home in Northampton, Massachusetts, after a brief illness.
Elizabeth V. Spelman was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Elizabeth Schneider Spelman and Norman Leslie Spelman (both deceased). She is survived by two sisters, Deborah Campert and Cornelia Maude Spelman; her brother Jonathan White Spelman and sister-in-law Liz Lerman. A second brother, Michael Francis Spelman, pre-deceased her. She is survived by a number of nieces and nephews, including “the divine” Anna Spelman, as well as a beloved goddaughter, Mira Minow Singer.
Vicky received her B.A. from Wellesley College in 1966 and her Ph.D. from The John Hopkins University in 1974. After teaching at both Amherst and Carleton College, she joined the philosophy department at Smith College and taught generations of students from 1982 until her retirement in 2024. She was a lifelong educator, eminent feminist scholar and professor of Philosophy, appointed to the prestigious Barbara Richmond 1940 Chair in the Humanities in 2000. Her first book, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist Thought (1988), was named an outstanding book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States. In subsequent, widely-read books she turned her philosophical attention to topics as varied as what it means to regard human beings as objects – rather than subjects — of suffering; to the notion of repair and to the variety of repair activities that humans undertake, from fixing cars to fixing friendships; and, in her 2016 book, Trash Talks: Revelations in the Rubbish, to an analysis of what it means to be a maker of waste and to relegate objects and peoples to the category of “trash.” There was no topic too small or too mundane to evade this remarkable philosopher’s scrutiny, written in accessible language and peppered with humorous and relatable anecdotes.
All who knew Vicky – family, friends, colleagues, and students — admired her astonishingly quick and irreverent wit. She was active in all aspects of campus life, and had a deep love of sports, playing on a local all-women’s softball team called The Hot Flashes. She was also a basketball phenom. Family legend has her shooting hoops, dressed for Anna’s Bat Mitzvah and having a blast. Fittingly, Vicky was working on a book about mirth at the time of her death.
This bright and glittering light is now extinguished; she will be sorely missed.
Donations in Vicky’s name may be made to the Scholarship Fund at Smith College. A memorial service will be announced at a later date.
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