History Commons^™

"If These Walls Could Speak": Judson College And The Formation Of The New Baptist Woman, 1838-1930, E.Gabrielle Walker

Dissertations

Southern Baptist women’s collegiate education and experiences led to their questioning traditional Baptist gender roles and interpreting religion to fit a modern, progressive worldview. Judson College established in 1838 in Marion, Alabama, created a space for its Baptist students to consider socially appropriate ways, outside of doctrinal boundaries, to serve God, themselves, their families, and humanity. Judson remained theologically and culturally conservative, perpetuating inherited religious and social notions of female subordination to men, while increasingly offering students more progressive curricula to meet changing economic and cultural realities. In compliance with white Southern and Baptist conservative values, Judson’s students generally accepted …

An Intergenerational Photo Exploration Of Self Care Actions In Self-Identifying Strong Black Women, Vanessa Patrice Goodar

Dissertations

The current study sought to expand upon the Giscombé Superwoman Schema (2010) specifically exploring the role of vulnerability resistance and help obligation as potential barriers to changing comprehensive self-care health commitments in self-identifying Strong Black Women (SBW). The Superwoman Schema characteristics of vulnerability resistance and help obligation along with socio-economic factors of income, religious affiliation and marital status were assessed in the project using a visual-ethnography approach to Photo Voice methods and five intergenerational focus groups of SBW's born between 1946 and 2002. The collective self-care knowledge of these eighteen participants was analyzed using a participatory action research discussion framework …

Reframing National Women's History Month: Practicalities And Consequences, Skylar Bre’Z

Dissertations

This study evaluates the practicalities and consequences of designating one month (March) out of the calendar year for the commemoration of women’s history. In the 1970s and 1980s, national women’s organizations such as the Women’s Action Alliance (WAA) collaborated with the Smithsonian Institute and the Women’s History Program at Sarah Lawrence College to build programs to increase awareness of women’s history. Using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in feminist theory, media studies, and historical memory studies, this project contextualizes the commemoration through its connection to 1970s women’s activism, explores its usefulness as a tool for building educational equity, and questions its …

The Challenges Of Lesbian Senior Leaders In The Army Branch Of The Department Of Defense, Ella Nunley-Spaights

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of lesbian senior leaders and the types of challenges they experience while serving in the Army Branch of the Department of Defense. A secondary purpose of this study was to identify strategies lesbian senior leaders employ to overcome perceived challenges while serving in the Army Branch of the Department of Defense.

Methodology: This phenomenological study described the lived experiences of seven lesbian senior leaders serving in the Army who were retired from service within the past five years. Convenience and snowball sampling were utilized to identify women who …

"Let's Get Together And Chew The Fat": Women, Size And Community In Modern America, Amelia Earhart Serafine

Dissertations

"Let's Get Together and Chew the FAT: Women, Size, and Community in Modern America" argues that between 1948 and the 1980s, women in America formed communities around issues of size in order to claim agency over their bodies. Primarily concerned with losing weight, many women in these groups nonetheless created new tools and abilities with which to resist oppression based on body size. Some women went as far as to form explicitly positive fat identities and reject compulsory slenderness. This dissertation investigates four cases studies: TOPS (Take off Pounds Sensibly), Overeaters Anonymous, Weight Watchers, and the Fat Liberation movement of …

Seekers And Observers: Life Histories Of Three Female Antebellum Historians, Annmarie Valdes

Dissertations

This dissertation provides a history and analysis of the educational experiences and scholarly texts of three female historians. The study employs the combined frameworks of Haraway's €˜situated knowledges' and Life History for examining three female historians who were involved in three integrated aspects of knowledge production: scholar, educator and author. The three case studies examine the lives of Elizabeth Peabody (1804-1894), Caroline Dall (1822-1912), and Mary L. Booth (1831-1889), with an analytical focus on their Antebellum Era, mid-nineteenth-century historical publications. A core contention is that knowledge production by women and, in particular, historical texts produced for schools and public consumption …

She Shot Him Dead: The Criminalization Of Women And The Struggle Over Social Order In Chicago, 1871-1919, Rachel A. Boyle

Dissertations

From 1871 to 1919, Chicago emerged as an epicenter of a struggle over social order as municipal officials and self-proclaimed reformers fought for the power to decide which people and what behavior should be designated as criminal. Studying the criminalization of women in Chicago reveals how contested categories of crime and gender changed over time and provides insight into broader battles over moral, political, and economic power in the United States. In the late nineteenth century, an intimate economy of public women fighting, drinking, and having sex for money profoundly shaped daily life in the streets, saloons, and brothels of …

Building Within Our Borders: Black Women Reformers In The South From 1890 To 1920, Tonya D. Blair

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the reform work of four unsung black women reformers in Virginia from the post-Reconstruction period into the early twentieth century. The four women all spearheaded social reformist institutions and organizations such as industrial training schools, a settlement house, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a girl’s reformatory/industrial school and a state federation of black women’s clubs. One of the selected women includes Jennie Dean, a former slave from northern Virginia, who founded an industrial training school for African-Americans in post-Civil War Manassas. Dean’s industrial school resulted from her tenacious drive to imbue former slaves with literacy …

Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Mcleod Bethune, And Septima Clark As Learning Leaders, Chameka Simmons Robinson

Dissertations

African American female educators have a prominent place in the history of adult education. In addition to their work as educators, they often served as activists and leaders that fought for justice and the transformation of individual lives and entire communities. This study examines Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Septima Clark as learning leaders. As a means of accomplishing this research, the work of the aforementioned educators was aligned with Stephen Preskill & Stephen D. Brookfield’s Nine Learning Tasks of Leadership. The effect of the educators’ learning leadership on their local communities and the implications for modern-day adult …

'We're Not Little Babies Anymore': A Cultural History Of Small Girls In America, 1920-1945, Stella A. Ress

Dissertations

The appearance of high-profile girl characters in popular culture media of all types soared between the years from 1924, when Little Orphan Annie first appeared in the comic section of newspapers, to 1945, when teenage girls replaced their younger sisters in the spotlight. As such, girl culture of the 1920s through the 1940s experienced a boon in popularity never before witnessed. And yet, despite substantial evidence that point to the impact preadolescent girls had on society during this time, surprisingly scholars have left the experiences of these girls and their depictions in popular entertainment unexplored. For historians, this raises a …

The Invisible Woman And The Silent University, Elizabeth Robinson Cole

Dissertations

Anna Eliot Ticknor (1823 – 1896) founded the first correspondence school in the United States, the Society to Encourage Studies at Home. In the fall of 1873 an educational movement was quietly initiated from her home in Boston, Massachusetts. A politically and socially sophisticated leader, she recognized the need that women felt for continuing education and understood how to offer the opportunity within the parameters afforded women of nineteenth century America. With a carefully chosen group of women and one man, Ticknor built a learning society that extended advanced educational opportunities to all women regardless of financial ability, educational background, …

Ladies' Library Associations Of Michigan: Women, Reform, And Use Of Public Space, Sharon Carlson

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the ladies' library associations in Southwestern Michigan from the middle nineteenth century through the early twentieth century to explore the impact of these organizations as agents of reform and in shaping public space. Ladies' library association records provide a major component of this study. Association records, consisting of constitutions, bylaws, minutes, treasurer records, book catalogs, yearbooks, and published reports yield valuable information to analyze and interpret the activities of ladies' library associations. Plat maps, panoramic maps, photographs, architectural drawings, and tax records offer evidence about the built environment and material culture of ladies' library associations. The actual …