Jean Frantz Blackall, longtime faculty member at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, passed away on July 15. She was 97 years old.
In 1950, Dr. Blackall earned her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College, a women’s liberal arts institution in Massachusetts. She went on to receive her master’s degree and doctorate in English literature from Radcliffe College, a women’s college that has since merged with Harvard University.
Upon completing her graduate studies, Dr. Blackall began her long career with Cornell University. In 1971, she became the first woman to receive tenure in Cornell’s department of English. Seven years later, she was the department’s first woman promoted to full professor. In addition to her primary faculty appointment, she was an early affiliate in the interdisciplinary women’s studies program. After retiring from Cornell in 1994, she continued to teach at the Christopher Wren Society at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Dr. Blackall’s scholarship focused on women’s studies and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British and American fiction, particularly the works of Henry James and Edith Wharton, leading her to become a founding member of both the Henry James Society and the Edith Wharton Society. In addition to numerous articles, she was the author of Jamesian Ambiguity and “The Sacred Fount” (1965).