A distinguished professor of English at UC Davis who is writing a book about female virginity has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship -- one of the nation’s most prestigious fellowships for the humanities.

Margaret Ferguson was awarded the $60,000, year-long fellowship to support the writing of her book “Missing the Maidenhead: Cultural Debates About the Hymen in the Early Modern Period.”

“The transition from virgin to wife has been a subject of intense social concern in many societies,” Ferguson said. “I'm focusing on debates about the meaning of female virginity during the Reformation era in England because those debates -- inspired in part by the long reign of a queen who refused to marry at all, Elizabeth I -- offer a particularly interesting lens through which to reassess modern debates about female virginity.”

The hymen has been a mystery and point of contention between the sexes since biblical times and such contention continues even in today’s society, according to Ferguson. For generations and across cultures, proof of a hymen’s existence in females has had legal ramifications in relation to the institution of marriage and has been an object of scientific discourse.

“The hymen is a magnet for the debate about the relationship between the visible and invisible state, and the material and immaterial,” Ferguson said. “It pertains to a state of being that is not testable and also speaks to an area of mistrust between the sexes.”

Modern examples of societies’ obsession with the body part whose original translation in ancient Greek means “thin membrane” include debates about the sexual experience of young female pop stars, the popularity of Madonna’s song “Like a Virgin,” and the prevalence of hymenoplasty, a surgery that creates a hymen-like membrane in women who lack one, Ferguson said.

“Hymenoplasty is a surgery that has no rationale, except for the myths of virginity,” she said. “Through my book I want to question why having a hymen is such an important idea around the world, why there are punishments for women in many cultures throughout time for the loss of this alleged body part, and why it is important for some people to have certainty about its existence. If these questions can be posed then we can have a more productive debate about virginity and its role in society.”

Ferguson was one of 19 professors nationwide to receive the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship this year. Other UC Davis faculty members who have been honored by the organization include Gina Bloom, Elizabeth Miller, Flagg Miller, David Simpson and Claire M. Waters.

These accomplishments attest to the quality of Ferguson’s work and the prestige of the UC Davis faculty, according to Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the UC Davis Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.

“Margie Ferguson works across an astonishing range of sources -- literary, legal, medical -- to ask questions that no one has thought to ask,” Owens said. “Her scholarship and her dedication to the enterprise of scholarship are inspiring to all of us. UC Davis is proud to count her as one of our most distinguished faculty members.”

Ferguson joined the UC Davis faculty in 1997 and served as chair of the UC Davis English department from 2006 to 2009. Ferguson, who received four literary awards for her book “Dido’s Daughters,” earned her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and her master’s degree and Ph.D. from Yale University.

About the American Council of Learned Societies

The American Council of Learned Societies, a private, nonprofit federation of 70 national scholarly organizations, is the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. It supports the advancement of humanistic studies in all fields of learning in the humanities and the social sciences, and the maintenance and strengthening of relations among the national societies devoted to such studies.

About UC Davis

For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has more than 32,000 students, more than 2,500 faculty and more than 21,000 staff, an annual research budget that exceeds $678 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges -- Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools -- Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.