Helen Huss Parkhurst

Helen Huss Parkhurst was born in New York City on January 3, 1887.^[1] She was one of the five children of Mary Sophie (née Huss) and Howard Elmore Parkhurst, the former of whom was the older sister of composer Henry Holden Huss.^[2] She studied at Dwight-Englewood School in nearby Englewood, New Jersey, and she graduated as part of the Class of 1905.^[3] After receiving her AB and MA at Bryn Mawr College, she continued her studies abroad at the University of Cambridge (where Bryn Mawr invited her to be a visiting fellow) and University of Paris (1913–1914), before returning to the United States to study at Johns Hopkins University (1915–1916).^[4][1] Afterwards, she returned to Bryn Mawr in 1916 as a lecturer in art history before receiving her PhD in 1917.^[1] That same year, she moved to Barnard College and worked as an Assistant in Philosophy, before receiving several promotions: instructor in 1918, assistant professor in 1924, associate professor in 1931,^[1] full professor in 1944,^[5] and eventually professor emeritus.^[4]

As an academic, she specialized in aesthetics.^[4] In 1930, she published the book Beauty: An Interpretation of Art and the Imaginative Life.^[1] In 1931, she was appointed a Guggenheim Fellow for the purposes of travelling to study the philosophy of architecture;^[1] during said travels, she visited Southeast Asia where she personally observed the Angkor Wat and Borobudur.^[4] In 1936, she published another aesthetics book, Cathedral: A Gothic Pilgrimage.^[6][4]

Parkhurst died on April 14, 1959 in New York City.^[4]

• Beauty: An Interpretation of Art and the Imaginative Life (1930)^{[7][8][9][10]}
• Cathedral: A Gothic Pilgrimage (1936)^[11][12]