More than half a century following arriving at Yale, background professor Cynthia Eagle Russett GRD ’64 died Thursday morning. She was 76.
Russett, whose scholarship centered on the background of American females and the intellectual background of 19th and 20th century America, succumbed to cancer at a nearby hospice on Thursday morning. In an email to the Saybrook community, where Russett was a longtime fellow, Saybrook Master Paul Hudak explained Russett died comfortably and peacefully among family members.
“Cynthia Russett had her workplace in Saybrook for as extended as I can don’t forget, and so she invested a wonderful deal of time with Saybrook college students as adviser, as colleague and a keen presence in the school,” explained Yale School dean and former Saybrook master Mary Miller.
Miller mentioned Russett, who had a wry and gentle sense of humor, assisted reclaim “a feminist history” with her scholarly operate.
Born Cynthia Eagle in Pittsburgh, Russett grew up in Washington D.C. and Maryland prior to attending Trinity College in Washinton, D.C. in 1958. She went on to earn a master’s and doctorate at Yale in 1959 and 1964, respectively. Her dissertation won the George Washington Eggleston Prize, the highest honor for a dissertation in American background at Yale.
At a panel hosted by the Yale Women’s Center in 2004, Russett recalled her encounter as a female graduate pupil at a mostly male University.
In 1958, a dean informed her, “You girls are not right here to interrupt the scientific studies of our guys,” she mentioned.
Shortly thereafter, Russett joined the Yale faculty in 1967, publishing her 1st guide, “The Notion of Equilibrium in American Social Considered,” 1 year later on.
Yale historian Gaddis Smith ’54 GRD ’61 recalled Russett starting up in the history division not lengthy after him, describing her as a “very, quite active” member of the department.
Throughout her profession, Russett authored numerous books, such as “The Extraordinary Mrs. R: A Friend Remembers Eleanor Roosevelt” in 1999, which Russett wrote with William Turner Levy, a close friend of Roosevelt’s.
In accordance to Russett’s biography on the Background Division internet site, Russett took a certain interest in the impact of science on non-scientific culture. Her 1989 book on the subject, “Sexual Science: The Victorian Building of Womanhood,” which examined how Victorian-era scientists attempted to prove women inferior to males, won the Berkshire Conference of Females Historians Yearly Book Award.
Russett was promoted to a total professorship in 1990, sooner or later becoming the Larned Professor of Historical past. From 1992 via 1995, she was also a fellow of the Whitney Humanities Center.
Past the classroom, Russell chaired the Yale College Executive Committee and served as director of undergraduate research of the Historical past Division in the course of her time at Yale. She also was a member of the executive committees of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and the Human Relations Area Files.
Russett stopped teaching in 2012 but remained an lively member of the St. Thomas Much more Catholic Chapel at Yale, exactly where she served on the Board of Trustees. This October, she gave a talk to the campus Catholic local community entitled “Life as a Scholar and Believer.”
In a Thursday e-mail to Saybrook College, Hudak mentioned ideas are underway for a January memorial services.
Russett is survived by her husband, political science professor Bruce Russett GRD ’61, four grownup children and three grandchildren.
Cynthia Russett, longtime Yale historian, dies
