Monday, August 5, 1996
Professor known as passionate scholar, engaging teacherBy Scott
Stimpson
Summer Bruin Contributor
The trip to Paris last month was meant to be a reward to herself
for having her latest book published and receiving tenure at the
State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghampton. Her 12-year-old
daughter Ana had come along to visit Europe. However, UCLA alumna
Constance Coiner and her daughter Ana Duarte-Coiner never arrived
in Paris. Their lives ended abruptly along with 230 other
passengers aboard ill-fated TWA Flight 800.
Starting in 1977, Coiner spent close to 10 years at UCLA as a
graduate student, first obtaining a master’s degree in English in
1979 and then finally a doctorate in American Studies in 1988.
After UCLA, she moved to New York and began teaching at SUNY
Binghampton.
Coiner, a recipient of the UCLA Chancellor’s Marshall Award and
the SUNY Binghampton Award for Excellence in Teaching, had a unique
teaching style.
"Because many students have been trained to be passive learners,
my greatest challenge is to coax them to become active
collaborators in their own education  with me, with each
other, and with the text they read," Coiner once said to a
reporter.
Professors who worked with Coiner agreed that she was an
exceptional graduate student and academic.
"She was a fabulous teacher because she brought such human
spirit and generosity to her teaching. She was abundantly generous
in her relationships with peers, faculty, mentors and her
students," said UCLA English Professor Karen Rowe.
While at UCLA, Coiner was the recipient of the UCLA Faculty
Prize for Distinguished Teaching Assistants and spent her summers
teaching in the UCLA Academic Advancement and Affirmative Action
programs.
Coiner was committed to her ideas of social justice.
"She tried to raise awareness of the influence of those social
structures, especially class, which marginalize and oppress people,
and she hoped to stir up passion in her students about confronting
and changing these conditions. She wanted her students to hear
voices of women, people of color and working class writers," said
her sister Virginia Coiner-Classick.
Described as "one of the finest teachers" while at UCLA, Coiner
designed her own doctorate program that bridged both the history
and English departments.
In 1988, Coiner began her career as a professor at SUNY
Binghampton. In a letter to Binghampton’s chancellor announcing
Coiner’s nomination for the University’s Award for Excellence in
Teaching, many Binghampton students and professors expressed their
high esteem for Coiner.
"Her written exams are meticulously clear and lively, and call
for students to reach out of themselves towards new levels of
understanding," said one of Coiner’s colleagues.
Another student said, "I left each class exhausted by the
intellectual work that the discussions pushed me to do."
Before she obtained her doctorate, Coiner won the 1987
Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year Award and the UCLA Alumni
Association’s Distinguished Scholar Award the previous year.
"She was a helluva lot of fun. She had a wonderful sense of
humor and she loved to relax, drink a beer and talk," said UCLA
Professor of education Mike Rose.
"She never slipped into a rigid ideology … she was
passionately committed to social change and just as committed to
honest conversation with people who disagreed with her," said
Rose.
After Coiner’s death, a former student wrote a letter to
Coiner’s partner Stephen Duarte about her effect on him.
"I couldn’t wait for class, to hear her speak, to feel the
passion that she felt about teaching … her eyes that opened and
glowed when students critically thought and understood."
Coiner had written many highly-acclaimed works, including her
dissertation "Pessimism of the Mind, Optimism of the Will" and her
most-recently published book, "Better Red: The Writing and
Resistance of Tillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur."
Coiner’s research involved investigating the roles of race,
class and gender in American history.
She was recognized as one of the pioneers in her field, American
studies. In a statement written for her reception of the UCLA Mary
Wollstonecraft Prize in 1988, it was noted that her "… original
scholarship will make her one of the few experts in this
field."
Describing her sister, Coiner-Classick said, "Constance loved
the students at Binghampton. These were students from working class
families who were every bit as gifted as Ivy League students. She
was determined that they would get excited about learning and would
get a first-rate education."
Along with Coiner on Flight 800 was her daughter Ana
Duarte-Coiner, an exceptional student, accomplished pianist and
reporter for a children’s television channel.
"Constance and Ana had been a team ever since Ana’s birth," said
Rowe.
Coiner and Duarte-Coiner died together July 17, 1996 when the
Paris-bound jet exploded mysteriously over Long Island. They are
survived by Coiner’s partner and Ana’s father Stephen Duarte,
Coiner’s mother Henrietta Coiner and three sisters.
Constance Coiner with her daughter, Ana Duarte-Coiner.