Grace Macurdy

Grace Macurdy
Born(1866-09-12)September 12, 1866
DiedOctober 23, 1946(1946-10-23) (aged 80)
Academic background
EducationRadcliffe College (BA)
Columbia University (PhD)
ThesisThe Chronology of the Extant Plays of Euripides (1903)
Academic work
DisciplineClassics
Sub-disciplineGreek History
Institutions

Grace Harriet Macurdy (September 12, 1866 – October 23, 1946) was an American classicist, and the first American woman to gain a PhD from Columbia University. She taught at Vassar College for 44 years, despite a lengthy conflict with Abby Leach, her first employer.

Macurdy eventually rose to become chair of the department of Greek before embarking upon an illustrious[1]: 214  international[1]: 198  career. One of her major areas of research was royal women during the Hellenistic period. Macurdy shaped the field of classics and the study of ancient history by pulling together both material evidence and textual evidence as sources in her pioneering studies of individual women.[2]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Wyles was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Hallett, Judith P. (October 13, 2017). McHardy, Fiona (ed.). "Assessing and Continuing the Contributions of Grace Harriet Macurdy, Pioneering Feminist Scholar: Barbara McManus' "The Drunken Duchess of Vassar"". Cloelia. Retrieved August 2, 2018. Grace recognized the need to move beyond the confines of traditional text-based scholarship. It was clear that women's lives could not be reconstructed from historical and literary texts alone, ... Grace had to supplement texts with material evidence, especially coins and inscriptions, but also sculpture, vases, and papyri.