Lily Ross Taylor Beyond Bryn Mawr College
Abstract
Written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of her death in 1969, my essay on the Roman historian Lily Ross Taylor focuses on her influence as scholar, teacher and educational leader beyond Bryn Mawr College, where she received her doctorate in Latin in 1912, and taught from 1927 through 1952. Among her achievements as public intellectual and academic celebrity, often as the first woman classicist so recognized, are her 1947 Sather lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, 1964–1965 Jerome lectures at the University of Michigan and the American Academy in Rome, and write-ups in such popular US venues as Life and Time magazines. They also include the piazza and garden named in her honor in 2009 by the Italian town of Ciciliano in Lazio, whose territory she had identified as the ancient municipality of Trebula Suffenas. Drawing on reminiscences from those who knew her as well as archival materials and an unpublished manuscript by Taylor herself on “Intolerance and Racial Differences”, I seek to locate Taylor, her accomplishments, and her global legacy today in a variety of different, less glamorous “elsewheres.”
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