Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts college in South Hadley, Massachusetts, is the oldest women's college in the United States, and the oldest continuing institution of women's higher education in the world.

Notable alumnae and faculty

Alumnae

For a complete list, see Notable Mount Holyoke College Alumnae

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Prominent alumnae of Mount Holyoke College include:

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• Emily Dickinson, 1849 - poet; left Mount Holyoke Seminary after one year because her religious ideologies differed from those of the college's founder, Mary Lyon
• Frances Perkins, 1902 - U.S. Secretary of Labor (1933-1945). First female cabinet member.
• Elizabeth (Sadie) Holloway Marston, 1915 - Co-creator of Wonder Woman http://www.bu.edu/law/history/marston.html.
• Jean Picker Firstenberg, 1958 - Director of the American Film Institute
• Julia Miller Phillips, 1965 - first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Picture for The Sting; producer, Close Encounters of the Third Kind; author of the controversial Hollywood memoir, You'll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again
• Carol Geary Schneider, 1967 - President, Association of American Colleges and Universities
• Wendy Wasserstein,1971 - playwright who won the 1989 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Heidi Chronicles
• Elaine Chao, 1975 - U.S. Secretary of Labor, 2001-Present; former national director, United Way
• Glenda Hatchett, 1979 - judge on nationally syndicated television series http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/judgehatchett/about/bio.php
• Suzan-Lori Parks, 1985 - playwright who won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Topdog/Underdog http://www.tcg.org/am_theatre/at_articles/AT_Volume_17/Oct00/at_web1000_parks.html
• Kavita Ramdas, 1985 - President and CEO, Global Fund for Women

Faculty

Distinguished faculty (past and present) at Mount Holyoke include:

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• James Baldwin (writer) - Five Colleges (Massachusetts) faculty and noted American novelist
• Sven Birkerts - author, The Gutenberg Elegies
• Joseph Brodsky - winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, and Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-1992.
• Luis Cernuda - poet http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/101102/luis.shtml
• Shirley Chisholm - U.S. Representative, 1968-1983, founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and simultaneously the first woman and the first African-American to run for U.S. President
• Anita Desai - novelist
• Joseph J. Ellis - 2001 Pulitzer Prize in History for Founding Brothers - The Revolutionary Generations and National Book Award winner for American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson
• John Irving - author of The Cider House Rules, and The World According to Garp
• W. Anthony Lake - U.S. National Security Advisor, 1993-1997
• Mary Lyon - pioneer in women's education in America; founder of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in 1837 (later Mount Holyoke College)
• Valerie Martin - novelist and short story writer
• William S. McFeely - 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for Grant: A Biography
• Becky Packard - winner of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor awarded to young scientists in the country.
• Bapsi Sidhwa - novelist
• David Staines - literary critic
• Beverly Daniel Tatum - president of Spelman College, and author of Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race
• Cyrus Vance - U.S. Secretary of State, 1977-1980
• Peter Viereck - 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Terror and Decorum and professor of Russian History
• Jean Wahl -philosopher
• Antoni Zygmund - mathematician who exerted a major influence on 20th-century mathematics http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/math/other/zygmund.htm

Fictional alumnae/Pop culture references

• Animal House: A group of Emily Dickinson Women's College students are taken out for a wild evening by the faux-Dartmouth brothers and pledges.
• Dirty Dancing: Jennifer Grey's character, "Baby", spent her last summer dancing before going off to Mount Holyoke College. "Baby's" real name is Frances, after Frances Perkins.
• Scooby Doo: A long-cherished, but since-debunked http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~bgjohnson/wwwfaq.html#trivia.scooby, urban legend held that the main characters of the 70's cartoon are based on representative archetypes of the Five Colleges. Mount Holyoke is commonly identified as the sexy Daphne, but in alternate versions Smith claims Daphne while bookish Velma personifies Mount Holyokehttp://travel.independent.co.uk/americas/north/article184365.ece.
• The Simpsons: Lisa Simpson is tempted by the Siren-like representatives of the Seven Sisters Colleges (and George Plimpton), who offer a free ride to the Sister school of her choice (and a George Plimpton hot plate) if she will throw a Spelling Bee.http://www.electrictao.net/archives/000007.shtml
• What's Up, Doc? (1972 film): Barbara Streisand announces that she had a mind for numbers because she majored in math at Mount Holyoke.