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Framing Femininity: Opportunities For Gender Non-Conformity At U.S. Women's Colleges At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Natté Fortier

Undergraduate Research Awards

Cross-dressing and same-sex attractions were common occurrences at historically women’s colleges (HWCs) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the majority of these institutions came into their own. When examining typical characteristics of HWC campus cultures in their formative years, one might be surprised to see misalignment between common and accepted behaviors by college women versus outside social expectations for women of their class and time period. Thus we might ask: what unique opportunities existed in the early era of HWCs that permitted students to transcend elite patriarchal expectations for gender and femininity? This paper aims to explore …