Martha Saxton, age 77, died at her camp on Doolittle on July 18, 2023, lovingly surrounded by family and friends after a courageous battle with lung cancer. Her daughter, Josephine, and son, Francesco, survive her. 

Born in Manhattan in 1945, she grew up in Newton, Mass. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1967 with a degree in history, she married photographer Enrico Ferorelli in 1977 and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1989. She joined the Amherst Faculty in 1996 and, as a beloved and respected faculty member, retired with emerita status in 2015. 

The author of a number of reviews, articles and interviews on wide-ranging subjects, Martha left a deep mark on both the curriculum and the students at Amherst, who describe her courses as nothing less than “transformative.” She also initiated courses that brought together Amherst students and inmates at the Hampshire Correctional County Jail and House of Correction.   

An accomplished historian whose scholarship focused on the relationship between ideology and the interior lives of women, with the recurring theme that ideas of ethics and morality are often gendered, Martha was the author of four books: “Jayne Mansfield and the American Fifties”, “A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott”, “Being Good: Women’s Moral Value in Early America” and “The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington”.  At her death, she was working on a biography of Edward Gibbon, with only the final chapter remaining. It will be completed by close friends. 

A friend of young Larry Madison, Martha’s association with Doolittle began when her children were small, and, thereafter, she and her family began spending almost every summer in Norfolk.

A distinguished scholar, a transformative professor, a wonderful wife, mother and friend and an engaged member of the community, she will be greatly missed. Should you wish to make a donation in her honor, these two organizations are named in her will: the Native American Rights Fund (narf.org) and climate organization 350.org.