In 2009, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire's (UWEC) women's studies program offered its first iteration of the faculty-led international immersion course Women's Lives and Experiences in Nicaragua. This program was created and initially led by Dr. Rose-Marie Avin, a faculty member in the economics department and an affiliate member of both…

Black women still experience racial oppression in the academy. In this study, I draw on Black feminist theory and oral narrative research to examine the narratives of Black women graduate students discussing their educational experiences. Black female graduate students deal with acts of everyday racism and instances of structural and internalized…

Historical scholarship has traditionally focused on the commonalities uniting Catharine Beecher and Mary Lyon, the two leading antebellum women's educational reformers in New England. This essay shifts that focus by contrasting their educational philosophies and exploring the implications their differences had for the development of American…

The authors use womanist caring (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2002) as a framework for analyzing data from an oral history project of Douglass School, an all-Black school that existed in the small town of Parsons, Kansas, from 1908-1958. In-depth interviews were conducted with 55 former students who attended the school during the 1920s through when it…

In 1896, John Dewey opened the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago. While much is known about this legendary school and its founder, the teachers whose daily work brought the school to life remain mostly anonymous. This essay attempts to remedy this historical invisibility by investigating four of the Laboratory School teachers--Anna…

In the fall of 2001, with posters, tote bags, speakers, and balloons, the University of Pennsylvania launched its celebration of "125 Years of Women at Penn." Exhibits illustrating the experiences of women students appeared around campus and on the Web, while banners trumpeting the contributions of Penn women waved from lightposts. The…

This article focuses on the first school for indigenous girls in Algeria that opened in Algiers in 1845. The founder, Eugenie Luce, taught girls the rudiments--French language and grammar, reading, arithmetic, and Arabic, while the afternoon hours were devoted to sewing. This early focus on teaching French in order to achieve the "fusion of…

This lecture will revisit nineteenth and twentieth century education policy and politics in the light of the experiences and struggles of a (nowadays) virtually unknown educator activist. Beautiful, tireless, courageous and principled, socialist school teacher Mary Bridges Adams (1855-1939) gave up her life for the Cause. Encouraged by William…

History has a habit of ignoring women. Thirty years ago one thought that re-emerging women's movement would never be dumped in the same way previous feminist generations were consigned to the dustbin of history. It took feminist activists and scholars; women trade unionists and health workers; feminist writers, publishers and artists; and the…

In this essay, the author provides a critique of sources relevant to the feminization of teaching in the United States from the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Sources covering topics such as the American Civil War, labor market forces, increasing urbanization, educational reform, and regional differences, and how they affected the feminization…

The 1920s was an ambivalent decade in Australia: on the one hand Australians were still reeling from the disastrous effects of the Great War and on the other they were witnessing unprecedented and exciting technological and social changes brought about by modernity. One of the most important modern technologies was the cinema, which Australians…

This article examines the career of Flora White, who operated a school for girls in Concord, Massachusetts (USA) from 1897 to 1914. The school promoted individualised learning and physical activity for young women. Its programme of female exercise and sports ran counter to prevailing scholarly, medical, and popular opinion in the US. White faced…

During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley--then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education--made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for…

In this article, the author shares her views on the collected works on women suffrage from 1920-1930, which were collated by the activists at National Federation of Women Teachers (NFWT). She relates how she had been impressed by the NFWT activists' organizational capacity to coordinate 70 identically worded motions in support of women's suffrage,…

Although she encountered criticism of her work, Harriet Martineau was the most widely read economics educator of 19th century Great Britain. Martineau wrote for the masses; she was convinced that it was each citizen's civic duty to learn economics. She relied on the body of knowledge which existed in her day: Mill's "Elements of Political…