Biography of Dr. Joanna Hubbs

Dr. Joanna Hubbs, president and senior editor of www.Transitionsabroad.com, has been editing copy for the website during the past 6 years since the passing of her late husband, Dr. Clay Hubbs, founder and publisher of ground-breaking Transitions Abroad magazine in 1977.

In 2006 she retired as professor of Russian cultural studies at Hampshire College where she had taught since 1971 after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Washington. She received a prestigious Woodrow Wilson fellowship to pursue her doctoral studies.

Joanna was drawn to Hampshire because of its commitment to free speech and social activism. Hubbs was one of the first faculty members hired at the college to help build a community of teachers and students—an environment in which learning, discussion, and debate would go on easily and continually, formally and informally, in the classroom and out.

Hubbs has written on topics ranging from alchemy to Russian folklore and literature. Her book Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture is an interpretive study of Russian history from prehistoric times to the present. For her work, Joanna received the 1989 Heldt Prize for Excellence from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies.

Joanna was married for 48 years to former professor Dr. Clay Hubbs, who left the college to found, publish, and edit Transitions Abroad magazine. The couple lived and traveled all over the world, and their son, Gregory Hubbs, continues to enhance and expand upon the award-winning www.TransitionsAbroad.com website—which has been inspired by family and independent travel over the course of more than 50 years. Joanna grew up in Europe, having such neighbors as Charlie Chaplin in Vevez, Switzerland in her youth, and speaks and reads five languages fluently. She has lived in Italy, France, Switzerland, and England. She has traveled slowly and long-term in countries and regions such as Russia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, most every Mediterranean and Scandinavian country, Africa and the Middle East—not including the countless countries she has visited for shorter periods of time during the course of cross-continental trips.

Hubbs has written two novels (including A Russian Affair), as yet unpublished, and is working on a third about the French visionary poet and adventurer Arthur Rimbaud. Joanna has also published short stories in Europe. She plans to continue her fiction writing and autobiography in retirement, and will divide her time between Amherst, New York City, and Italy, where she owns a home in a village between Siena and Florence.

Joanna is presently involved in selecting and editing articles for www.Transtionsabroad.com. To contact her or for interviews, please email her at senioreditor@transitionsabroad.com.