Cynthia Eagle Russett (February 1, 1937 – December 5, 2013) was an

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historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

, noted for her studies of 19th century American

intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualization, conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of ...

, and women and

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

. Russett was born Cynthia Eagle in

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, on February 1, 1937.Margalit Fox
"Cynthia Russett, Historian of Women, Dies at 76"
''

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'', Dec. 19, 2013. She studied history as an undergraduate at Trinity College in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, earning a bachelor's degree, and then did graduate work at Yale University, earning a Master's from Yale in 1959 and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1964.Matthew Lloyd-Thomas
"Cynthia Russett, Longtime Yale Historian, Dies"
''Yale Daily News'', Dec. 6, 2013. Her dissertation was awarded Yale's highest honor for American history dissertations, the George Washington Eggleston Prize. She joined the Yale faculty in 1967, and was eventually appointed the Larnard Professor of History. Russett's spouse is a fellow Yale faculty member,

Bruce Russett Bruce Martin Russett (26 January 1935 – September 22, 2023) was an American political scientist who was most well-known for his work on the democratic peace. He was Dean Acheson Professor of Political Science and Professor in International and ...

, and the couple had four children together.

Notable works

* ''The Extraordinary Mrs. R: A Friend Remembers Eleanor Roosevelt'' (1999, with William Turner Levy) * ''Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women'' (1993), edited with Ruth Barnes Moynihan and Laurie Crumpacker * ''Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood'' (1989,

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

) (winner, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Annual Book Award) * ''Darwin in America: The Intellectual Response, 1865-1912'' (1976) * ''The Concept of Equilibrium in American Social Thought'' (1968)

Notes

1937 births 2013 deaths American academics of women's studies Yale University faculty Yale University alumni Trinity Washington University alumni American historians Deaths from multiple myeloma in the United States American women historians 21st-century American women {{US-historian-stub