Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society

Students, as part of an advanced seminar, examined and wrote about the lives of these women, their intellectual contributions, and the unique impact and special problems that being female had on their careers.
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Sara Yorke Stevenson

Life

 Sara Yorke Stevenson was born in Paris on February 19, 1847. Her parents, Edward and Sarah Hanna Yorke were Louisianans who moved to Paris during the 1840's. They both came from aristocratic families, her mother's family owned a large cotton plantation and her father was a cotton broker. Stevenson's parents moved back to the states when she was only ten leaving their daughters to attend boarding school in France. Stevenson stayed in Paris from 1858 through 1862 attending school, after which she joined her family in Mexico where they had moved because of some investments of her fathers. In 1867 the family relocated to Vermont during some violence in Mexico. Stevenson's father died only a year later and not long after that she moved to Philadelphia to live with two uncles and an aunt. She married Cornelius Stevenson, who was a Philadelphia lawyer, only two years later. They had one child William, who was born in 1878 (Gacs, 1989).

Stevenson's interest in anthropology can be traced to her involvement in the Furness-Mitchell Coterie. The coterie consisted of the intellectuals of the elite and influential Philadelphians. The group ranged from musicians, writers to scholars, anthropologists, and educators. Because of her involvement in the group Stevenson was able to enjoy privileges that would not have been possible without her involvement in the coterie. In fact without the support of the men, who had a lot of influence, in the coterie Stevenson probably would not have been able to accomplish what she did (Gacs, 1989).

Work

In the 1880's anthropology was just becoming a discipline as universities were beginning to develop their anthropology departments. Stevenson was known as an "armchair archaeologist or anthropologist"; she never carried out her own fieldwork, but analyzed the information that others had collected. An 1892 issue of "Anthropological Work in America described that Stevenson "is perhaps our only lady Egyptologist. Her lectures in Egyptian subjects have made a sensation." She mentored with Frederick Ward Putnam, who had just established Harvard's anthropology department, along with Franz Boas, Zelia Nuttall, and Alice Fletcher. Stevenson's interests were very wide; she was interested in everything from cultural diffusion to cultural evolution (Gacs, 1989).

In 1892 Putnam supported Stevenson's appointment to the Jury of Awards for Ethnology. A special act had to be passed to allow a woman to serve this position; Stevenson was elected vice president of the jury. In 1894 Stevenson was the first woman to speak at the Peabody Museum on "Egypt at the Dawn of History". She was president of the Oriental Club of Philadelphia, the Contemporary Club, and the Pennsylvania Chapter of the archeological Institute of America and was founder and officer of the University Archaeological Association, the American Folk-Lore Society and the American Exploration Society. She was also a member of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia and in 1895 was admitted to the American Philosophical Society. Stevenson also joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1884 and was nominated a Fellow in 1895. She also established the Equal Franchise Society of Pennsylvania, in recognition of the difficulties women faced. She served as president until 1910 and first vice president until the Federal Suffrage Amendment passed in 1920 (Gacs, 1989).

Stevenson's greatest contribution was her role in the establishment of Pennsylvania's University Museum. 1889 William Pepper, Stevenson, and others established a museum at Pennsylvania and in 1899 the first section was dedicated. In 1891 Stevenson, Pepper, Talcott Williams, and Joseph Coates were appointed by the University Archaeological Association to create a department of archaeology and paleontology to manage the museum. Stevenson then served on the governing board from it's start until 1905. She also served as the curator of the Egyptian and Mediterranean section of the museum from 1890 to 1905 (Gacs, 1989).

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