Jeannette Augustus Marks

Jeannette Augustus Marks (August 16, 1875 – March 15, 1964) was an American professor at Mount Holyoke College. She is the namesake of the Jeannette Marks Cultural Center (formerly known as the Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Community Center), which provides support and programming for LGBT students and allies. Biography Born on August 16, 1875, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, her parents were Jeannette Holmes (née Colwell) and William Dennis Marks, who was the president of the Philadelphia Edison Company, after working at University of Pennsylvania, where he taught engineering. As her parents were estranged, Marks grew up mainly in the company of her mother and younger sister, Mabel, alternating homes between the parental properties in Philadelphia and Westport, New York. Marks attended boarding schools in Europe the United States. She then attended Dana Hall School and Wellesley College. In 1899 she met Mary Emma Woolley, a Wellesley professor, with whom she entered into a relationship that lasted 48 years. In 1900, she earned a Bachelor's degree and three years later she received her Masters'. From 1901 to 1939, Marks was at Mount Holyoke College, where she was a professor of English Literature. She founded a lecture series to discuss modern literature at the college named the Play and Poetry Shop Talks, which featured established poets and authors. She also founded the Laboratory Theatre in 1928, where she was its director until 1941.