OUTSTANDING WOMEN: MARY STEDMAN SWEENEY

Mary Stedman Sweeney (1891-1974)

Mary Stedman Sweeney had been linked to the International Institute since the 1949s and worked for the Institute in various capacities, both in Madrid and in the United States, until her death. According to Carmen de Zulueta, "it can be said without hyperbole that Mary Sweeney dedicated her life to the International Institute." For Saville Davis, president of the International Institute (1969-XNUMX), "Mary Sweeney was the Institute” and worthy continuation of the work of Alice Gulick and Susan Huntington.

Since her arrival in Madrid in 1919 at the hands of José Castillejo, Mary Sweeney joined her life to the International Institute and the people of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. She maintained a close relationship with José Castillejo, Natalia Cossío, Alberto Jiménez Fraud and María de Maeztu. As a result of this proximity, the Colegio Estudio would be installed in the headquarters of the International Institute from 1950. Its contributions to cultural relations between Spain and the United States are numerous. Among them stands out the small scholarship program that in the 1953s and XNUMXs offered the possibility of studying in the US or the United Kingdom to a group of almost fifty Spanish women. She was also part of the group that, from Boston, promoted the resurgence of the Spanish Association of University Women in Spain in XNUMX.

He lived for several years in Madrid where he taught English and sports at the Institute-School and directed the Casa de Fortuny 53 of the Residencia de Señoritas, both carried out by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios. From 1923 he was part of the IIGS Corporation and its Board of Directors.

Mary S. Sweeney was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1917, where she also earned her master's degree. A few years later she obtained her Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College with a thesis on Torres Naharro. She taught Spanish at Simons College, Radcliffe College, Bryn Mawr and Wheaton College where she remained until her retirement.

Jimena Menéndez Pidal, founder of Colegio Estudio, remembered Mary Sweeney in this way:

After the long parenthesis of our war, when Mary [Sweeney] appears again in Spain, it was exciting to participate in her desire to join the flourishing past of the Institute (indebted to so many people who had enthusiastically enriched it culturally) with the desert reality in that present: a dilapidated building, and absent or hidden close friendships.

She did not know discouragement and, with her serenity that concealed a great tenacity, she materially rebuilt that beloved house, and tried to bring to it the warmth of a small remnant of people who vibrated in her same ideals...[...][1]

Pilar Piñon Varela

References:

Zulueta, Carmen: One hundred years of education of Spanish women. History of the International Institute.

Brochure published by the International Institute in Spain, “In Memoriam Mary Stedman Sweeney”, 1974. International Institute Archive.

[1] Brochure published by the International Institute in Spain, “In Memoriam Mary Stedman Sweeney”, 1974. International Institute Archive.