Grace Macurdy

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 rose to become chair of the department of Greek before embarking upon an international

Academic career

Macurdy was born in Robbinston, Maine, and was the daughter of Simon Angus Macurdy and Rebecca Thomson Macurdy. She went to high school in Watertown, Massachusetts, before studying at Radcliffe College, where she gained highest second-year honors in 1887, and graduated in 1888. Macurdy would become the first graduate from Radcliffe to gain a doctorate, and become a college professor. but as her research progressed she began to work on etymology of names, mythic and religious origins, and ethnology, thus beginning to model herself more after the approach of Jane Harrison, herself a female pioneer of the time. In her new position, she increased collaboration with the Latin faculty, mentored younger colleagues, increased enrolments, improved the strength of the courses offered by the faculty, and continued to publish widely.

Impact and critical reception

Over the course of her career, Macurdy published significantly, including five books, fifty-seven articles in major academic journals, sixteen reviews, and several poems and articles in more popular volumes.

On her retirement in 1937, the Vassar Alumnae Magazine published four 'Tributes' to Macurdy from other scholars, which recognised her fulsomely. Macurdy was described as a "true 'scholar' of a kind which is rare in America and by no means common in Europe" by Gilbert Murray, and by J. A. K. Thompson as "the first American woman to meet the Greek scholars of Europe and America on something like equal terms."

Books

The Chronology of the Extant Plays of Euripides (1903), (PhD dissertation). Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Troy and Paeonia, with Glimpses of Ancient Balkan History and Religion. (1925) New York: Columbia University Press. Hellenistic Queens: a Study of Woman-Power in Macedonia, Seleucid Syria, and Ptolemaic Egypt. (1932) Johns Hopkins University Studies in Archaeology, no. 14. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. (Reprinted in 1985 by Ares Publishers). Vassal-Queens and Some Contemporary Women in the Roman Empire. (1937) Johns Hopkins University Studies in Archaeology, no. 22. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. The Quality of Mercy: the Gentler Virtues in Greek Literature. (1940) New Haven: Yale University Press.