Elizabeth Hazelton Haight

Elizabeth Hazelton "Hazel" Haight (February 11, 1872 – November 15, 1964) was an American classical scholar and academic who specialised in Latin teaching. She spent most of her career working for Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Haight was the second female president of the American Philological Association, and first woman to chair the Advisory Council of the American School of Classical Studies at Rome. She published eleven books in the field of Classics, as well as histories of Vassar and James Monroe Taylor. Her works focused on Latin Literature and the Greek novel, before she began the study of symbolism in Latin literature in her final publications. She was involved in Vassar's war efforts during World War I, and supporting foreign scholars during World War II, and was consistently interested in promoting women's education as a force for good in American society.

Career Elizabeth Hazelton "Hazel" Haight was born in Auburn, to John White Haight and Helen M. Haight . Her father was one of the leading businessmen in Auburn during his lifetime. She began studying Classics at school in Auburn, and attributed her love of the subject to the influence of her mother, who had read and enjoyed Virgil in her own schooldays, and who had been a decisive factor in Haight's going to college.

Haight matriculated at Vassar College in 1890, and was commencement speaker for her undergraduate class, graduating from Vassar with a degree in Classics in 1894. She also edited the yearbook for that year, and was awarded a retrospective membership to Phi Beta Kappa. During the course of her studies, some of her poems were published in The Miscellany News.

Haight returned to Vassar to join its faculty in 1902, working at Vassar alongside studying for her PhD. She became an associate professor in 1910, and was promoted to professor in 1922, partly due to the strong written support of Grace Macurdy, another pioneering female classicist at Vassar. In her correspondence, Macurdy praised Haight for her "executive ability" and described her as a teacher "whose enthusiasm and genuine love for her subject infect her classes".

Haight was the first woman to chair the Advisory Council of the then American School of Classical Studies at Rome, and in 1931 received a summer appointment to lecture at the University of Chicago. Her presidential address was entitled "Prose Fiction in the Augustan Age". Upon meeting Mussolini in Italy in 1935, Haight presented him with works written about Italy by Vassar faculty. At the 1965 meeting of the American Philological Association, Lily Ross Taylor read a tribute to Haight that praised her "devotion to the Classics and the "great achievement" of her teaching. "charming", and "interesting".

From her work on Apuleius, Haight moved on to consider work in less popular genres, such fiction beyond the novel (Essays in Ancient Fiction (1936)), and the Greek novel (Essays on the Greek Romances (1943)) – the latter being a particularly unpopular genre for study at the time, as Haight herself noted. This work was followed by More Essays on Greek Romances (1945). Both books were criticised by reviewers, and were not particularly popular. However, her interest in this genre at a time when it was generally neglected by scholars has led to her work being described as "pioneering". Her two penultimate books, the last published when she was 80, took up the topic of symbolism – first The Symbolism of the House Door (1950) and then Aspects of Symbolism in the Latin Anthology and in Classical and Renaissance Art (1952). Haight's final published book was a translation of Pseudo-Callisthenes' Life of Alexander, published in 1955. In addition, she published multiple articles in a range of classical journals.

Selected publications Vassar with James M. Taylor. New York, Oxford University Press. 1915. The Autobiography and Letters of Matthew Vassar. New York, Oxford University Press. 1916. Life and Letters of James M. Taylor. New York, E.P. Dutton & Company, 1919. Italy Old and New. London, Stanley Paul & Co. 1922. Horace and His Art of Enjoyment. New York, Dutton. 1925. Apuleius and His Influence. New York, Longmans Green & Co. 1927. Romance in the Latin Elegiac Poets. New York, Longmans Green. 1932. Essays on Ancient Fiction. New York, Longmans Green. 1936. The Roman Use of Anecdotes in Cicero, Livy and the Satirists. New York, Longmans Green. 1940. Essays on the Greek Romances. New York, Longmans. 1943. ; Nachdruck Port Washington (New York), 1965. More Essays on the Greek Romances. New York, Longmans Green. 1945. The Symbolism of the House Door in Classical Poetry. New York, Longmans Green. 1950. Aspects of Symbolism in the Latin Anthology and in Classical and Renaissance Art. New York, Longmans Green. 1952. Pseudo-Callisthenes, Life of Alexander. New York, Longmans. 1955.