Carole Bell Ford

Carole Ford is an avid and lifelong traveler who keeps extensive journals of her varied experiences which, until now, she has shared with only a small group of close friends. They have encouraged her to do a travel book, which she is considering, but her published work is of a different type. This column for New Paltz Nation, On and Off the Beaten Path, is one of the rare times she’s shared her travel journal with the public.

Ford earned her doctorate at Columbia University in 1980. Her thesis led her into the area of women's studies which became one of her prime teaching areas at Empire State College, SUNY’s alternative college for adult students, where she served for more than twenty-five years. When she retired from the faculty, several years ago, she turned her attention to a writing career.

Ford’s first book, an oral history, The Girls: Jewish women of Brownsville, Brooklyn,  was published by SUNY Press in 2000, the year she retired. Subsequently, an excerpt from that book was also published, in Jews of Brooklyn (U. Press of New England). Her most recent work, The Women of CourtWatch: Reforming a corrupt family court system was published last year, in 2005, by the University of Texas Press. Her book has been selected by the national organization, Justice for Children, as an outstanding work. It can be viewed on either their website, www.jfcadvocacy.org   or the website of the University of Texas Press www.utexas.edu/utpress/

Ford is currently engaged in a work-in-progress; a study of aging female Holocaust survivors.