She became Dean of History at the local community college here. She wrote her thesis on the role and influence of secret societies on and in French Government during a 10 year period in the 18th century (I believe 1730 to 1740).
The class was a survey of Western Civ. It was a good class, I learned a lot. She brought a lot to the lecture that wasn't in the book. We were given reading assignments out of the textbook, but the lectures were almost exclusively devoted to her own material. The textbook was titled Western Heritage to 1527, but we spent 85% of class time on civs up to the fall of Rome. Half of the remaining time we spent on Darwin, and everything else. There was a second survey class that was focused primarily on history post Dark Ages.
You have to understand, the class was a survey of history, so the civilization at Catal Huyuk was neolithic, or prehistory. So we did cover stone age culture (the caves in France), neolithic, bronze ages. I have a two volume set of the history of the world (approx 2000 pages), and all it mentioned about the civilization at the Catal Huyuk settlement was that one sentance about the complex cult discovered in existance there. So I asked her what she knew if anything. And she was clear that while most pre-history (and a lot of history) was dark, to her there was a special darkness reserved for that culture. And she made clear that was her opinion. She said that she'd look into it, and came back with the refernce sources cited. She was adamament that those were THE best ones.
Her passion was Egyptology. We probably spent 40% of class on Egypt. And she knew that material cold.