Jean Hogarth Harvey Baker (born February 9, 1933) is an American historian and professor emerita at Goucher College, where she was the Bennett-Hartwood Professor of History. Baker was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow in 1982.

Early life and education

Jean Hogarth Harvey Baker was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 9, 1933, to Rose Lindsay Hopkins and insurance agent F. Barton Harvey. She received her B.A. from Goucher College in 1961 and her M.A. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1965^[1] alongside fellow historian David Herbert Donald.^[2] She completed her Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in 1971.^[1]

Career

Baker was an instructor of history at Notre Dame of Maryland University from 1967 to 1969. She began her career at Goucher College as an instructor in 1969. She worked as an assistant professor at Goucher (1969–1975) before becoming an associate professor of history (1975–1978). In 1979, she was made a full professor of history until 1982, when she became the Elizabeth Todd Professor of History. In 1979, she was an editor for the Maryland Historical Magazine, a publication of the Maryland Historical Society.^[1] As of 2018, Baker is a professor emerita at Goucher College and the Bennett-Hartwood Professor of History.^[3][2] She also taught courses at the Maryland Correctional Institution - Jessup (MCI-J) as part of the Goucher Prison Education Partnership. Baker was a visiting professor at Harvard College.^[2]

Baker is a member of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and Phi Beta Kappa.^[1]

Her books have received positive reviews.^[4]

Baker played an important role in advocating for increased recognition of the role of women in society. In her experience, women were frequently excluded from historical and academic narratives. The Women's Movement empowered Baker to explore these deficits. She wrote stories on suffragists including Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and Frances Willard. The New York Times lauded Baker's work as "wider in scope than previous work and making use of sophisticated feminist historical and sociological scholarship." In anticipation of the hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, Baker was featured in WYPR's Beyond the Ballot program that features "the contributions of extraordinary Maryland women."^[5]