Laura Alandis Hibbard Loomis (June 18, 1883 – August 25, 1960) was a distinguished American literary scholar and university professor who made
significant contributions to the study of medieval English literature.Partner Sophie Jewett
Queer Places:
Wellesley College (Seven Sisters), 106 Central St, Wellesley, MA 02481
University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Mount Holyoke College (Seven Sisters), 50 College St, South Hadley, MA 01075
Hunter College, 695 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065, United States
Columbia University (Ivy League), 116th St and Broadway, New York, NY 10027
90 Morningside Dr, New York, NY 10027, USA
Laura Alandis Hibbard Loomis (June 18, 1883 – August 25, 1960) was a distinguished American literary scholar and university professor who made
significant contributions to the study of medieval English literature.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, to Frederick Alan Hibbard and Margaret McMullen Hibbard, she spent her formative years in the city and graduated from Hyde Park High School. Pursuing higher education at Wellesley College, she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1905 and her master’s degree in 1908. Her early academic promise was recognized in 1910 when she received Wellesley’s prestigious Alice Freeman Palmer fellowship for research abroad. She subsequently pursued her doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, earning her Ph.D. in 1916.
Hibbard began her professional academic career teaching at Mount Holyoke College from 1908 to 1916. She returned to her alma mater, Wellesley College, in 1916, where she built a celebrated career over twenty-seven years. At Wellesley, she rose to become a full professor in 1929 and was appointed to the prestigious Katharine Lee Bates Endowed Chair in English Literature. Among her notable students at Wellesley was the pioneering Chinese author Bing Xin. Throughout her tenure, Hibbard established herself as a leading voice in medieval studies, regularly publishing research in high-profile academic journals such as Speculum, PMLA, Modern Philology, and Modern Language Notes, and eventually serving a term as vice president of the Modern Language Association.
Beyond her individual research, Hibbard’s life and career were deeply embedded in the historical socio-academic phenomena characteristic of elite women's colleges during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this era, female academics who achieved hard-won professional standing faced systemic barriers that often forced a choice between career and traditional marriage, as altering academic career paths to accommodate a husband’s professional moves meant sacrificing hard-earned autonomy. Consequently, many female faculty members built deep, enduring domestic and romantic partnerships with other women on campus—arrangements frequently referred to as "Wellesley marriages."
At Wellesley, virtually the entire English department formed these intimate lesbian partnerships, creating supportive, long-term households. Faculty pairings included figures such as Katharine Lee Bates with economics professor Katharine Coman, Martha Hale Shackford with Margaret Pollock Sherwood, and Vida Dutton Scudder with Florence Converse. Hibbard herself entered a partnership with poet and Wellesley English professor Sophie Jewett. Similar relationships flourished across higher education, including pairs like Lucy Maynard Salmon and Adelaide Underhill at Vassar, Gertrude Buck and Laura Johnson Wylie, and comparable couples at Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. By choosing female partners over traditional heterosexual marriage, these women forged brilliant domestic and intellectual arrangements that allowed them to satisfy longings for affection, eroticism, companionate love, and emotional support while retaining their professional status. Through these unions, they claimed a permanent foothold in higher education and established a legacy that paved the way for future generations of women scholars.
In 1925, Hibbard married fellow medievalist Roger Sherman Loomis, whose first wife—and Hibbard's close friend—Gertrude Schoepperle had died in 1921. For years, she commuted to maintain her post at Wellesley before retiring from the college in 1943. After her retirement, she moved full-time to New York City to live and collaborate closely with her husband. In New York, she continued her scholarly pursuits, teaching at Hunter College and Columbia University. In 1953, she curated a major exhibition of medieval illuminations and paintings at the Morgan Library and authored the accompanying catalog. She passed away in New York City on August 25, 1960, at the age of 77. Thirteen years after her death, her enduring contributions to medieval scholarship were honored with the publication of Adventures in the Middle Ages: A Memorial Collection of Essays and Studies by Laura Hibbard Loomis (1973).
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