Biography of Dr. Joanna Hubbs

Dr. Joanna Hubbs, owner and senior editor of Transitionsabroad.com, has been working for the website for the past five years.

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.

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 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 and speaks and reads five languages fluently. She has lived and traveled extensively in Poland, England, Switzerland, Africa and the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans, and France and Italy—not including the many 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Hubbs has written two novels (including A Russian Affair), as yet unpublished, and is working on a third about the French visionary poet and adventurer Arthur Rimbaud.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 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 Transtionsabroad.com. To contact her or for interviews, please email her at senioreditor@transitionsabroad.com.