Nancy Freeman Regalado Horwitz, a medievalist and Professor Emerita of French at New York University, died peacefully on November 23. She was 90 years old and lived in Greenwich Village.

 

The cause of death was the sequela of a fall suffered at her apartment where she lived independently and enthusiastically hosted family, friends, colleagues and former students during visits to New York.

 

Nancy is remembered for her lively good nature and determined, empathetic interest in people and the world. Nancy loved being in the ‘bosom of family’ and was a devoted sister, mother, and wife. She extended this sense of love, warmth and security to countless friends and family and to dozens of graduate students who would sit at her dining-room table seeking reassurance, guidance, and editing help.

 

Nancy’s scholarly work focused on medieval French literature and culture, particularly through the lens of performance. During her career, she was honored with three National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awards, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, as well as an academic knighthood bestowed by the government of France, the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. A collection of essays celebrating Nancy's accomplishments as a path-breaking senior woman in the field of medieval French literature, Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado, was published in 2007.

 

Nancy's complete bibliography is available at https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/nancy-regalado.html. Colleagues are discussing her contributions at her NYU remembrances page https://as.nyu.edu/departments/french/people/InMemoriam_NancyRegalado.html.

 

Born in Boston on June 8, 1935, Nancy was raised in Mill Valley, California. Her mother, Charlotte Hume, was born in China in 1906 and was the daughter of Dr. Edward Hume the director of the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and founder of the Yale University medical mission in China. Nancy’s father, Norman Easton Freeman, a pioneering vascular surgeon, was born in Philadelphia in 1903 and was the brother of the noted psychosurgeon Walter Freeman.

 

Nancy graduated from Wellesley College in 1957. She fell in love with France during her junior year abroad with the Smith College program, and after graduation returned to the Sorbonne, Faculty of Letters, University of Paris. She earned her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1966.

 

During her time as a scholar in New Haven, Nancy participated in five years of personal Freudian analysis, an experience that kindled a lifelong interest in psychology, deep conversation, and the exploration of family relationships. It also shaped her compassionate approach as an advisor to graduate students. Nancy’s remarkable mentorship would later be recognized with the NYU Distinguished Teaching Medal and the Golden Dozen Teaching Award.

 

While at Yale, she met her first husband, Antonio Regalado García, and they married in 1960. Antonio, an émigré from Spain and 1954 Harvard graduate, was pursuing his Ph.D. at Yale and later became a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at NYU. That same year, 1968, Nancy joined the French Department, where she taught until her retirement in 2010.

 

In 1983, after 23 years of marriage, Nancy was divorced from Antonio.  In 1985 married Nathan Horwitz, a couple’s therapist and a Julliard trained jazz musician. Nancy and Nat were married for thirty four years until Nat’s death in 2019, and enjoyed travelling to France, London, and Berlin, where they reveled in gatherings and conversations with friends.

 

Nancy’s scholarly life was focused on performance in medieval France. Her research pushed beyond traditional literary criticism to consider areas of cultural history, art history, musicology and performance theory, and in collaboration with colleagues, she helped establish an understanding that medieval narrative was intended for performance, not just silent reading.

 

For instance, Nancy always opened her phone using the passcode 1313, a reference to the year of a splendid Medieval feast and spectacle marking the knighting of the sons of Philip the Fair. The joys and pleasures of the eight-day chivalric and religious celebration on the street of Paris, Nancy wrote in one of her papers, “represented the moral and political well-being of the realm of France.”

 

Similarly, in every realm of her life, Nancy held a role as an advocate and defender of moral order. At NYU, she founded the Women’s Faculty Caucus, a group which sought to document and correct disparities between the pay of male and female professors. And after her daughter was held at gunpoint during a robbery of the Barnes & Noble on 86th Street, Nancy became actively involved with New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, an organization with which she lobbied and advocated for gun control for thirty years. Until her death, she maintained an enthusiastic interest in politics, knitting a pink hat and participating in several Women’s Marches,. She attended the People’s Institute Undoing Racism Community organizing workshops, and was a devoted donor to Democratic causes.

 

From 1969 to 2011, Nancy lived in the Silver Towers, the I. M. Pei designed NYU apartment buildings. Upon retirement she and Nat moved to West 13th Street where they renovated his psychoanalytic office into a one-bedroom apartment with custom shelves that strained to contain her library and his music collection of jazz LPs. Later, realizing the dream of many New Yorkers, Nancy and Nat acquired the adjacent unit, breaking through the wall and joining the two apartments via a long, walk-through closet.

 

Originally meant to be a new office for Nat, after his death the new unit became simply the “guest apartment”—a cozy pied-à-terre Nancy offered to family, former students, writers trying to finish novels, and colleagues visiting New York. The ritual of a visit with Nancy always included tea, some French cheese and a bowl of soup, but most of all, hours of long, friendly conversation.   The “guest” apartment became a concrete expression of Nancy’s good will, love of festivity, and welcoming personality.

 

Nancy was pre-deceased by her brother David Freeman. She is survived by her sisters Margery Freeman, Corinne Barnwell, Mary Ann Barton and Katherine Hyde; by her children Mariana and Antonio; by her son-in-law Gregory Succop and daughter-in-law Stephanie Rudloe; as well as by three grandchildren: William, Charlotte and Priscilla. “Aunt Nancy” is also survived by a grand parade of nieces and nephews and their children.

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