In Memoriam
Augusta Lynn Bolles
Professor Emerita
The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
A. Lynn Bolles, Professor Emerita at the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UMD, College Park, and a prominent scholar of women, organized labor, gender relations, and tourism in the Caribbean, Latin America, and the U.S., passed away on February 8, 2026, in Maryland. She was 76 years old.
Widely recognized as an important pioneer in women’s studies, Bolles was among a cadre of feminist scholars whose work helped build the field as it established itself and flourished in the Anglophone Caribbean. Dr. Bolles published three books with academic presses and many articles in a wide variety of edited volumes.
Lynn received her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Rutgers University, where she was mentored by Helen M. Icka Safa. Her life and work were supported by her beloved husband Jim Walsh, and later her sons, Shane and Robeson.
She joined the Women’s Studies Program at Maryland in 1989, after serving for eight years as the Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College, where she left a strong legacy as one of the founders of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program. She served for many years as a member of the editorial collective of Feminist Studies (1988-Spring 1997), a leading journal in the field. Often nurturing the work of younger scholars, she was a valued and sought-after mentor for undergraduate and graduate students, and a generous colleague whose labor helped shape the contours of feminist studies and sustain them at the intellectual and institutional level.
This article was taken from the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies article published on February 18, 2026. To read additional reflections from students, colleagues and friends, please view the whole article.