In Memoriam: Carol Hurd Green

A Cambridge native, Dr. Green began her academic career as an English instructor at the College of Notre Dame in Maryland from 1959-1963, then as an assistant professor at Merrimack College for a year before joining Boston College as an English and history instructor in 1964. She left in 1970 to teach at Newton College of the Sacred Heart—shortly before its merger with BC—and then at Radcliffe College, Tufts University, and Georgetown University, returning to BC in 1981 as associate dean at the College of Arts and Sciences.

Shortly before that transition came the publication of Notable American Women: The Modern Period, for which Dr. Green had been co-editor: the follow-up to a three-volume set of biographical dictionaries concerning the lives and accomplishments of women published by BC Professor of History Janet Wilson James and her husband Edward. The Notable American Women series was widely regarded as a milestone in the development of women’s studies as an academic discipline. James was the namesake of an award presented annually to a Boston College senior in recognition of their research endeavors, academic achievements, and personal commitment to women’s and gender issues. Dr. Green was a member of the committee that organized the annual Janet Wilson James Lecture on Women and Health at BC.

During her second stint at BC, Dr. Green took part in or helped lead various programs, initiatives, and activities aimed at promoting greater opportunities for—and increasing the visibility of—female and AHANA scholars and students.    

Dr. Green became a member of the BC Women’s Studies Core Committee, which in 1985 received a Ford Foundation grant for faculty development as part of the foundation’s “Project on Women and Gender in the Curriculum in Newly Coeducational Institutions.” The grant was renewed numerous times over the years, and Dr. Green later became a member of the national steering committee for the Ford project.

She was one of the first appointees to the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Committee, which each year recognizes a BC junior for academic achievement, extracurricular leadership, community service, and involvement with the African American community and African American issues both on and off campus. At the 1999 MLK Scholarship Banquet, Dr. Green was recognized for her efforts to promote equality.  

In 1990, Dr. Green was appointed to the newly created University Council on Intercultural Affairs, which sought to facilitate the coordination of existing programs and foster the development of new initiatives that enhanced the intercultural climate on campus.

Dr. Green later co-administered a Ford Foundation grant aimed at promoting cultural diversity. In a 1991 Boston College Biweekly interview, she explained that the grant would support faculty development, launch a mentoring program, and assess the campus climate regarding cultural diversity.

The goal, she said, was “to alert students right from the beginning to the priority given by the University to the values of cultural diversity and respect for differences on campus.”

She was also regarded one of the chief architects of the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Urban Teaching Scholars Program in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, an intensive one-year master’s program she co-founded in which participants teach in urban schools through a curriculum that prioritizes critical inquiry, social justice education, and community building. In 2002, she left her associate dean post to serve as the program’s director, although she continued to teach in the English Department.

Among many other activities, Dr. Green co-directed the Boston College American Law and History Institute, a summer program organized by MCAS and the BC Law School that hosted teachers of American history from overseas institutions for six weeks of lectures, discussions, workshops, site visits and special events. The teachers used the experience to plan curricula in American history or American studies that will suit the needs of their institutions.

Dr. Green had an international experience of her own when she earned a Fulbright grant to spend the 1996-1997 academic year at the University of Palacky in the Czech Republic, where she was a visiting professor for American Studies.

But even as she put her resources and talents to bear on big-picture academic, political, and societal matters, Dr. Green kept her eye on issues closer to home. She and English faculty colleagues organized regular donations of homemade or store-bought quiche and brownies—which Dr. Green delivered—to a Boston shelter for low-income and homeless women.

“It’s a nice, simple idea: Feed people lunch,” she told the Boston College Chronicle in December of 1993. “And the response has been very enthusiastic. Everybody wants to do something for others, especially around the holidays, but time is such a problem. This program allows people to contribute in a way that’s manageable.”

“Carol was a stalwart defender of underdogs and supported AHANA students at a time when there were very few of them at BC,” said J. Joseph Burns, a former MCAS associate dean and later associate vice provost for undergraduate academic affairs. “She actively supported women and Women’s Studies at the graduate and undergraduate level, and mentored many more students who stayed in contact with her to the end. She was a scholar, mentor, and great friend to all in need.”

“Carol helped me to choose my courses, and she often pointed me in the direction of taking one course every now and then that was much more for my own development as a whole person rather than simply in pursuit of a degree or to fulfill major or minor requirements,” said Meg Pechilio Mackey ’87, whose mother and younger sister became friends with Dr. Green over the years.  

When Mackey got her master’s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, she recalled, Dr. Green took her and her family to dinner at a Thai restaurant. Over the years, she attended parties at Dr. Green’s house; once, Dr. Green even hosted Mackey’s sister and her friends.

“That is who she was: a lover of a diverse range of people and of good conversation and always generous to a fault,” said Mackey. “She embodied so many of the Jesuit principles that we espouse.”

Dr. Green was co-editor of American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from Colonial Times to the Present and co-author of American Women in the 1960s: Changing the Future. She served on the board of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, the state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Dr. Green earned a bachelor’s degree from Regis College, a master’s degree from Georgetown, and a doctorate in American Studies from George Washington University.

She is survived by her daughter, Miriam Wisener, and three grandchildren. She was predeceased by her son, Martin M. Green, and her husband, Martin B. Green.