Guide to the Elizabeth Hazelton Haight Papers, 1894-1959 (bulk 1911-1953)

Collection Summary

Biographical Note

Elizabeth Hazelton Haight (1872-1964) was born on February 11, 1872, in Auburn, New York, to parents John W. Haight and Helen Meeker Haight. She attended Vassar College in 1890 and graduated as part of the class of 1894. After graduation, she taught in New York at the Rye Seminary School in Rye (1894-1895), in Troy at the Emma Willard School (1895-1900), and in Brooklyn at the Packer Collegiate Institute (1900-1901). In 1899, she received a M.A from Vassar in absentia, and in 1902 she returned to Vassar as an instructor in Classics. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell in 1909 with a dissertation on The Sea in Greek poetry.

In the summer of 1913, she travelled with a group of students to Greece and Italy as part of a classics department trip. She returned to this region almost every other summer during her time as a professor. During World War I, Haight was chairman of the Faculty Committee on War Activities, coordinating Vassar’s commitment to the war effort. She became a full professor in 1922, the same year that she published her most well-known scholarly work, Italy Old and New, with publisher E.P. Dutton. In 1923, she became chairman of the Classics Department and both founded and curated the Vassar Classical Museum, which included small archeological finds that she collected on her many trips to Italy and Greece. Today, most of those finds reside within the Vassar College Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. Her extensive publication history includes titles relating to Vassar College history, studies of ancient literature and poetry, and translations of ancient texts. Haight firmly believed that women were equal to men within academia and went on to become the first female chair of the Advisory Council of the American School of Classical Studies at Rome and the second female president of the American Philological Association (the first having been Vassar Classics professor Abby Leach in 1899).

Haight retired from teaching in 1942, although she remained active in Vassar College life. In 1952, the Elizabeth Hazelton Haight Fund for Research in Classics was established by a group of Vassar alumnae, including Inez Ryberg and Laura Voelkel Sumner. Haight died in 1964 in Beacon, NY, at the age of 91.

Scope and Content Note

The collection contains correspondence, writings, photographs, and clippings related to the life and career of American classicist and Vassar College professor Elizabeth Hazelton Haight (1872-1964). Correspondence includes letters to and from Haight with other writers and academics, such as Gilbert Highet, Helen MacInnes, Inez Scott Ryberg, and J. A. K. Thomson; Vassar College faculty and administrators; and others. Writings include drafts of several works by Haight, as well as a translation of "What Happened at Ephesus" by Xenophon of Ephesus. Photographs include a photograph album likely assembled by Haight on a trip with her sister, Helen Ives Haight (VC 1898), and several others in 1923, and a photograph album assembled by Laura Voelkel Sumner (VC 1942) in 1948.

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Encoding Information

Encoded by Emma Gronbeck, February 2025.

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