RANK LINK 6

Vida Dutton Scudder

Who was this interesting woman, an Anglo-Saxon scholar writing in the 1890's, when we imagine there to have been few women in this field?

You can get some information about her from Gerald Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional History (see index); there is some discussion of Scudder in Graff, and in Michael Warner, eds. The Origins of Literary Studies in America: A Documentary Anthology . New York: Pantheon, 1989.

• What can you find out about the tradition of women scholars in medieval studies?
• What might be the value of such research to you, whether you are a man or a woman, if you are thinking about a place in the academy for yourself?

In addition to Scudder, look for work about Elizabeth Elstob, an eighteenth-century woman whose grammar of Old English was one of the first in modern English. You should begin your research with the entry in her name in the Dictionary of National Biography. There is a reference to Elstob in Gillian Overing's essay on Eve in the Old English poem Genesis B, also in the Two Languages collection in Chapter 2.

1/98