The Center for the Study of Transformative Lives

Megan Marshall studied with both Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. In 1976, Marshall took Bishop’s last Advanced Verse Writing class at Harvard, not knowing then that she would later go on to write a biography of the poet. Image: Megan Marshall in California in 1975. Join the Center for Megan's lecture next week: On Writing Womens Lives.

Elizabeth Peabody pioneered the kindergarten movement in the Unites States. Prior to opening her first kindergarten in 1860, schools for younger children were only common in Germany. Peabody also opened a bookstore, called Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's West Street Bookstore. #didyouknow #TransformativeLives

The New York Times journalist Larry Rohter referred to Elizabeth Bishop as "one of the most important American poets" of the twentieth century. Bishop published 101 poems during her lifetime and in 1955, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her second collection of poetry, "Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring."

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader." -- Margaret Fuller #TransformativeLives

Lucy Stanton was the first African American woman to graduate from college. During her commencement speech on August 27, 1850, she said: "Woman, I turn to thee. Is it not thy mission to visit the poor? To shed the tear of sympathy? To relieve the wants of the suffering? Where wilt thou find objects more needing sympathy than among the slaves! #didyouknow #TransformativeLives