Upon entering the male domain of higher education in the late nineteenth-century, college women challenged not only conservative beliefs about women's minds but also restrictive notions about the female body. By the 1920s, attending college had "become the thing to do." Using extensive primary research in college archives, this work examines female students' attitudes toward their bodies in the midst of this cultural transformation This social history makes clear that young women's attitudes toward their bodies developed in relation to a set of cultural discourses that were contested, historically specific, and continually mediated. To explore the impact of ideas about race, class, educational mission, and coeducation on women's attitudes toward their bodies, I analyzed Smith College, Spelman College, and Cornell University. Students' specific experiences were then compared to popular ideals of health, femininity, and female beauty. Prior to the early 1900s, local campus cultures shaped students' ideas about their bodies. At Smith and Cornell, in response to the feared effects of "mental work" on women's femininity and reproductive organs, efforts to prove female health included vigorous exercise, weight gain, and hearty eating. At Cornell, its controversial coeducational design compelled "coeds" to also demonstrate female propriety. For African American students at Spelman Seminary, post-Civil War efforts to counter racist stereotypes dominated bodily concerns. Spelman students resided outside the "protective," race-specific concerns that dominated discussions about white, middle-class women's reproductive health. Beginning in the 1910s, an emergent national student culture rooted in mass consumerism and the idealization of modern youth recast female students' body images. On all three campuses, students donned flapper fashions, bobbed their hair, conducted active mixed-sex social lives, and memorized new nutrition and home economics standards. Yet, even as campus cultures converged, students continued to mediate popular discourses, particularly in regard to dieting practices. While white women joined the "dieting craze," African American women at Spelman College did not.

The study was undertaken to analyze the historical relationship between the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and its state colleges. In 1838, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts established the first normal school in the nation, with a specific mission to train individuals to become teachers in the common schools of the state. Over the past 150 years, much has happened to shape the present design of the Massachusetts State Colleges as they are known today. These institutions have evolved from single purpose institutions into liberal arts oriented state colleges. During the development of the state colleges, the Commonwealth has consistently neglected to support the colleges. As a result, the state colleges have, in many ways, become the weakest segment of the Massachusetts system of public higher education. This study attempts to show that where a history of ambivalence and neglect meets a period of uncertainty, in a time of declining resources, the dependent organizations are in serious trouble. Given the lack of support shown towards the state colleges as a result of political issues, changes in demographics, and the predominant role of private higher education in the state, the state colleges' mission, funding, and future are clouded in uncertainty. Research on this subject specifically centered on state archives, reports, and texts on the Massachusetts State Colleges and the history of higher education in the Commonwealth. Personal interviews with prominent Massachusetts political and educational leaders were also used to gain present perceptions of the Massachusetts higher education system and the role of the state colleges within that system. Conclusions were drawn from the data collected and recommendations were made on possible ways to enhance the role of the state colleges within the Massachusetts system of public higher education.

This study is the result of interest aroused by the realization that little is Imown of the origin and development of home economics. Although magazine articles and reports of committees are numerous, educational textbooks give scant mention to this subject. Therefore, it is to be hoped that this study will be helpful to students in the fields of home economics and education.

The three-fold purpose of this study is, (1) to show what church groups or private Christian organizations maintain elementary and more specifically, secondary schools, (2) to review briefly the history of each school, and (3) to present general summaries and trends in the growth of the Christian school movement.

In 1900, Umeko Tsuda founded the Joshi Eigaku Juku (Women's Institute of Language Studies, which later became Tsuda College), the first private institution of tertiary learning for women in Japan. Tsuda was one of the first females in Japan's history to study in the United States, spending eleven years of her childhood (1871–1882) on a Japanese government-sponsored study program in the United States, and returning in 1889 for three years of study at Bryn Mawr College, another pioneering institution of higher learning for women. Tsuda's establishment of the Joshi Eigaku Juku marked her as a true educational innovator; her success in founding it secured her place in history as a pioneer in the higher education of women in Japan. This dissertation sets out to understand the catalysts found in the social, economic, political, and educational milieus that shaped Tsuda both in Japan and in the United States, and to understand what place Tsuda's experience at Bryn Mawr under M. Carey Thomas held in her development as an educational innovator. Through a comprehensive examination of the social structures, political and economic trends, and educational polices in place during the latter third of the nineteenth century in both nations, this dissertation examines what forces compelled Tsuda to take the revolutionary step of founding her school and establishing higher education as an option for women in Japan, when such an institution was thoroughly unwelcome by the Japanese populace at large.

This case study is intended to heighten awareness and draw attention to the fact that in spite of the enlightened intent of the Brown decision and the educational opportunity initiatives of the Great Society, broad, dramatic and troubling inequalities continue to separate American society today. These inequalities are pervasive and show themselves along racial, social and economic parameters. Across America, and most dramatically in urban cities like Boston, disparities in employment, income, housing, health, and educational attainment are pervasive. As a result, there is a compelling need to continue to expand educational opportunities. The primary purpose of this study will be to provide a detailed account of the development and evolution of educational opportunity programs at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. This study will examine the interplay between the university's mission and the development and implementation of programs designed to advance equal educational opportunity for historically under served students. Woven within the fabric of this analysis will be a contextual discussion of certain public policy and economic events at the national level which influenced the development of programs at the Boston campus. The study will begin in 1966 with the establishment of the College Preparatory Program and chronologically trace the development of a unique set of other educational opportunity programs at the University. The study will conclude with a discussion of the Upward Bound Math Science Initiative funded in 1990. Each of the programs studied will be reviewed from a number of different perspectives. The analysis will show the specific need each program was designed to address as well as the specific goals, objectives, and activities that would be implemented to meet these needs. The study will also highlight significant developments over time and key lessons learned. This study will, therefore, trace the evolution of policy and programmatic initiatives which were developed and pioneered at the University of Massachusetts at Boston to address education needs of disadvantaged students. In doing this, important insights will be gained into the contextual and programmatic elements which most effectively meet the needs of this increasingly important population. Finally, this study will show that as UMass/Boston is pulled to become a more traditional university, the educational opportunity programs discussed in this study play an important role in helping the campus to maintain a clear focus on services and programs designed to address the disadvantaged student population cited in UMass/Boston's founding principles.

The purpose of this study is to create in the Bilingual Puerto Rican Teachers an awareness of his/her role as a transmitter of Puerto Rican cultural values. This dissertation proposes the development of a Teaching Handbook which teachers can use to amplify his/her knowledge of his/her own culture and which can serve those teachers that are not Puerto Rican as a learning/teaching guide. The investigator conducted a review of literature which includes: (a) aspects of the culture learned through literature; (b) aspects of the culture not necessarily found in literary sources and is acquired. The investigator presented the results from the findings of the present study that reveal that the majority of Puerto Rican teachers in the United States come here for different reasons. Later they became teachers in different parts of Western Massachusetts. Each one of the teachers agreed that they are and should be transmitters of the culture. Other findings were the fact that some students had problems or cultural shocks in the new country. For example: language, climate, foods and in high school a greater problem communicating with other students and teachers. Those parents that were interviewed agreed that they came to this country to help their children in receiving a better education. Another of the parental worries of those parents that were interviewed, was that their children's adaptation to the new school system was difficult. The parents were concerned that the education of their children should include the Puerto Rican culture. They saw it as something that they could learn in the schools via the teacher. The investigator introduces a model for a handbook to serve as an outline for the transmission of cultural knowledge to Puerto Rican teachers and non-Puerto Rican teachers and the students they teach. It was concluded from the study that through the proposed cultural workshops, bilingual teachers will be able to acquire a wider knowledge of Puerto Rican culture. Through the handbook s/he will get a clearer idea of the possible way in which s/he can communicate this knowledge to his/her Puerto Rican students.

This dissertation is a study of the professional life and, to a lesser extent, the personal life of Mary Emma Woolley (1863-1947), an American educator, feminist, social reformer, peace activist, and religious leader. As one of a handful of women presidents of elite women's colleges, Woolley created a unique style of leadership while she worked with others to establish unifying organizations to support the further development of women's opportunities. This narrative biography focuses on Woolley's intellectual and professional roots, training, and achievements. After a theoretical introductory chapter, the next four chapters study the years during which Woolley developed skills, a philosophy, and personal style that reflected the ideas, mentors, opportunities, and challenges that she encountered. Chapters six through nine are organized around four major challenges that faced Woolley as President of Mount Holyoke College. These included the challenge to advocate successfully for the higher education of women, to bring Mount Holyoke to equal status with other elite women's colleges, to inculcate students with a lasting sense of their social responsibility as educated women, and to create a fulfilling personal life for herself. Woolley's professional life paralleled significant gains made by women in education and the professions. However, by the end of her career, women experienced significant losses both in opportunity and status. The final chapter of the study documents the controversy over Woolley's presidential succession which ended in her replacement by a man. The study concludes that Woolley's exemplary leadership demonstrated what it was possible to achieve in a single-sex institution. Woolley and women like her in positions of leadership were able to transform single-sex women's colleges into institutions where professional women could achieve and students could receive both high-quality education and full exposure to the world beyond the colleges. Woolley herself used the college as a platform from which she influenced a much wider audience through her speeches and articles. However, Mount Holyoke's loss of female leadership in 1937 was a casualty of a generalized loss of female leadership opportunities.

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Described by one historian as the ‘cartographic assemblage of the globe’, the two centuries of print revolution and colonial expansion between 1500 and 1700 witnessed an exponential increase in the sophistication, exactitude and proliferation of mapping in Europe. Such developments infiltrated a vast array of social, civic and political spheres. ‘[E]arly modern maps and mapping practices,’ writes Richard Helgerson, ‘had their part in national consolidation, overseas expansion, humanist and Reformation historicism, emerging agrarian capitalism, scientific revolution, and a general abstracting of time and space’. In the Atlantic archipelago in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the visibility of maps grew significantly. This thesis analyses a wide variety of different textual forms and genres to ask if a narrative of this profusion of cartography can be developed, with its own distinct themes and methodologies of representation. It pays particular attention to mapping moments in texts by major authors such as Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. In addition, didactic manuals, mathematical treatises, engravings, pedagogical tracts, colonial narratives, and utopian fiction are all considered with a view to understanding how early modern English culture engaged with the map, its physicality and production.