Blanche Hazard

Biography:

Blanche Hazard came to Cornell in 1914 as an assistant professor of home economics, with a special responsibility to develop courses on the history of women and women's work. After spending two years at Thayer Academy and two years at Radcliffe College, Hazard taught history in both public and private schools, and was head of the Department of History at Rhode Island Normal School from 1899 to 1904. During this period, she was also an officer of the New England Association of Teachers of History in Colleges and Secondary Schools. She became well-known for her lectures at teachers' conventions on historical methods, as well as for her collaboration with Harvard's Alburt B. Hart on a book about children in the Colonial Era. In l904, Hazard returned to Radcliffe, where she earned a B.A. in l907 with first honors in history and government. In 1913, she completed a Ph.D. at Harvard in history; her dissertation, The Organization of The Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts Before l875 (1921), was the first book written by a woman published by Harvard University Press. At Cornell, Hazard and Martha Van Rensselaer collaborated in creating an early version of women's studies. Hazard taught courses on "Women in Industry," "Women in the State," and "History of Housekeeping." She also wrote a number of pamphlets for the Farmers' Wives Reading Course, including Civic Duties of Women (1918), which was widely used and reprinted as women prepared to exercise their suffrage. When she left Cornell in 1922 to return to New England and marry, Hazard was a full professor of home economics. For more information, see https://hdl.handle.net/1813/4024.

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