In the waning months of 1998, Andrea Hamilton was on top of the world.
She had earned a doctorate in history at Tulane University after toiling for three years on a scholarly paper about Baltimore's Bryn Mawr School and its place in women's education. She had sold the dissertation, a social history of the nation's first school dedicated exclusively to college preparation for girls, to the prestigious Johns Hopkins University Press.
With her paper due for publication as a book, Hamilton would move from student to scholar, and her future as a historian looked rosy.
Her dream has since crumbled.
Without explanation, Bryn Mawr lawyers have blocked the paper's publication -- forcing Hopkins to pull out -- by citing an agreement Hamilton signed to gain access to school records. The agreement gives Bryn Mawr approval rights over any publication based on research in its archives, and school officials have refused to sign off on Hamilton's book.
The rejection, said Professor Wilfred M. McClay, her adviser at the New Orleans university, makes it unlikely that Hamilton will find a job as a tenured professor at a respected university. "They were out to crush this thing," he said, "and a promising career is dead in its tracks, along with a book that would have put Bryn Mawr on the map."
Adding to Hamilton's woes after blocking the book's publication, Bryn Mawr officials also put her manuscript out for review by two historians, one the sister of the school's headmistress. Both panned the 349-page work, one of whose primary themes is that during its 12-decade history, Bryn Mawr gradually relaxed the high academic standards established by the five women who founded it.
Hamilton and McClay were stunned, because the paper had passed muster at an academic press with Hopkins' reputation. Before offering a contract, academic presses send manuscripts to at least two scholarly readers who pass judgment anonymously. In addition, manuscripts under consideration are reviewed by faculty.
"I was taken totally aback, and I was totally confused," said Hamilton, 35, who now lives in Dallas. "I'd had nothing but good relations with Bryn Mawr since the day I entered the archives in 1995. I'd sent them copies of my dissertation as soon as it was published in 1998. Then they suddenly turned from hot to cold without explanation."
Reconstructing what happened at Bryn Mawr and Hopkins is difficult because most of the principals, including officials at Hopkins Press and the private school in North Baltimore, won't comment.
