We invite you to learn a little about the people in our community in our occasional series “Meet a Neighbor.” In each of these posts, we profile someone who lives or works in Amherst by sharing their responses to our 20-ish questions, both serious and fun. This week: meet Amy Mittelman.

Amy Mittelman’s lived experience as the wife of a college professor is the underpinning for her new book Dames, Dishes, and Degrees. She lives in Amherst and has a PhD in history from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Massachusetts.

She won the Ruth A. Smith Writing Award from the University of Massachusetts and is the author of Brewing Battles: A History of American Beer (2007). Amy has also published two articles as well as essays, reviews, and reference works. She’s written over 600 blog posts.

She was a Five College Women’s Studies Research Center Associate for the academic year 2010-2011. In the past, Amy had a business, Academic Publicity, which helped scholarly authors promote their books. She helped at least one author get his book published in paperback.

Amy has been a historian, a mother, a businesswoman, a nurse, and a published author. She has always brought skills, resources, and lessons from previous endeavors to each new one. This is typical for women.

Many women’s lives are not straightforward. Both male and female baby boomers are famous for second acts and continually reinventing themselves. This has always been especially true for women, including Amy. Amy’s experiences make her uniquely qualified to write Dames, Dishes, and Degrees: Faculty Wives in America.

Meet Amy at her book launch at Amherst Books on Tuesday, June 16 at 7:00 PM.

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Full name:

Amy Helaine Mittelman

Years living or working in Amherst:

40 years

Job/What keeps you busy most days?

For the past few years, I have been writing, revising, and editing Dames, Dishes, and Degrees: Faculty Wives in America. I also spent a considerable amount of time looking for a publisher which worked out. 

Hobbies:

Reading, learning to play the recorder, and learning French

Book you’d recommend to a friend:

Any Jane Austen book. She wrote 6 novels.

Last show or movie you streamed:

The Other Bennet Sister which is also a book I would recommend.

Five things you wouldn’t want to live without:

My husband, my sons, my extended family.

Top of your bucket list:

Living in France.

Life-changing experience:

Falling off a bicycle when I was sixteen. 

First job:

Checking time cards at Gimbels in New York City.

A hidden talent or little-known fact about you:

I figure skate.

Dumbest thing you ever did:

Hitchhiking around western Connecticut with friends.

One trend you’d like to see return:

Good customer service and businesses that care about people.

If you could have dinner with any 3 people, alive or dead, who would you invite?

Jane Austen (no explanation necessary), my great-grandmother, Batya, who had three children in Russia, one more in America, and died at thirty-six, Constance Green who got a  PhD at 40, won a Pulitzer prize, and never held a full-time academic position. Reading her obituary in1975 made me want to be a historian.

Best (or worst) advice you ever got?

When I was thinking about going back to school to become a nurse, I realized I wouldn’t finish until I was over 40. I said this to a friend, who responded, “Amy, either way you will be forty.”

Favorite place to get a bite:

Pasta E Basta in Amherst and T.J. Buckley’s in Brattleboro, Vermont.

3 favorite foods?

Popcorn, potato chips and nuts.

What gives you the creeps?

Spiders.

Who do you most admire?

My husband, Aaron.

Are you sunrise, daylight, twilight, or night?

I am a night person so night but I am also usually a positive person so daylight. I guess I am a mix.

What would you like to be known/remembered for?

For being a kind, generous, caring person.

Which song can you listen to all day long?

Jolene.

What was your favorite game to play as a child?

A My Name is Alice with a spaulding because I would say A My Name is Amy.