Abstract
This chapter explores the introduction and integration of research into women’s colleges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Research culture developed more quickly in such colleges as Vassar, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Barnard, Wellesley, and Bryn Mawr, all of which were independent, established early, and possessed relatively greater resources than other women’s colleges. But Goucher, Sweet Briar, and other younger colleges hired women scholars with PhD’s in the social sciences and those faculty also pursued research as part of their professional identity and incorporated research into their teaching with their women students. This chapter examines the ways both student research and research conducted by faculty were integrated into and transformed the largely teaching cultures of small women’s colleges. This chapter examines women social science scholars in the colleges and the strategies they developed to ensure strong social science programs in their institutions, to train young women in social sciences, to push their institutions to accommodate their research commitments, and to use their research to influence policy and reform at the local, national, and international levels.
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Notes
- 1.
Mary Ann Dzuback, “Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, 1915–1940,” History of Education Quarterly 33 (Winter 1993): 579–608, on the college’s social science research commitments.
- 2.
Lindsey R. Harmon, A Century of Doctorates: Data Analyses of Growth and Change (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1978), Table 4, 17; Patricia Albjerg Graham, “Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education,” Signs 3 (4; 1978): p. 766, Table 1; Susan Boslego Carter, “Academic Women Revisited: An Empirical Study of Changing Patterns in Women’s Employment as College and University Faculty, 1890–1963,” Journal of Social History 14 (Summer 1981): 675–699; Caswell Ellis, “Preliminary Report of Committee W, on Status of Women in Women in College and University Faculties,” Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 7 (October 1921): 23.
- 3.
Geraldine Joncich Clifford, Lone Voyagers: Academic Women in Coeducational Universities, 1870–1937 (New York: Feminist Press, 1989). Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Ellen Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Social Reform) New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Patricia A. Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Robin Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion of Reform, 1890–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
- 4.
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon).
- 5.
Four women’s colleges, two coeducational, and one men’s college valued research. “Summary of the Conference on Research in the Social Sciences in Colleges Held at the Social Sciences Research Council, December 12 and 13, 1931,” Ethel B. Dietrich Papers, File 1, Faculty Files, Mount Holyoke College Archives (FF, MHCA).
- 6.
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s (Boston: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 28–41; Lynn D. Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 121–64.
- 7.
Lucy Maynard Salmon, Domestic Service (New York, 1897). Lara Vapnek, Breadwinners: Working Women & Economic Independence, 1865–1920 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 104–106. For example: Salmon, Progress in the Household (Boston, 1906) and Historical Material (New York, 1933). Adams and Smith, “Introduction: Lucy Maynard Salmon and the Texture of Modern Life,” in Lucy Maynard Salmon, 1; James Harvey Robinson, The New History: Essays Illustrating the Modern Historical Outlook (New York: Macmillan, 1912), 2, 17, 16, 24.
- 8.
Teaching: James Taylor quoted in Louise Fargo Brown, ed., Lucy Maynard Salmon: Apostle of Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943), 214; Elizabeth A. Daniels, Bridges to the World: Henry Noble MacCracken and Vassar College (Clinton Corners, NY: College Avenue Press, 1994), 79, on “Salmon’s iconoclastic teaching methods,” and 59. Alumnae: Salmon to Henry Noble MacCracken, 20 January, History Department Files, Archive Collection, Vassar College (VC). “Interview with Caroline Ware,” conducted by Susan Ware, January 27–29, 1982, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Eloise Ellery to Salmon, 28 June 1913, box 6, file 74, Lucy Maynard Salmon Papers, Special Collections, Vassar College (LMS, SC, VC).
- 9.
Library resources: Salmon to James M. Taylor, Annual Report of the History Department, 1894–95, file F: History, Archive Files; Taylor to Salmon, 26 August 1887, file 97, box 8; Taylor to Salmon, 11 November 1896, file 99, box 8; Salmon to Taylor, 28 October 1901, file 31, box 3 (LMS, VC). Teaching loads: Salmon to Taylor, 6 May 1906; Salmon to Taylor 10 January 1914, file F: History, Archive Files, Special Collections, Vassar College (SC, VC).
- 10.
Salmon to MacCracken, 20 January 1917, History Department Reports, Archive Files, VC. See History Department Reports, Archive Files, SC, VC.
- 11.
Mills to Taylor, Annual Report, 1895–95, and reports in Economics File, SC, VC. Mills’s influence: Henry Noble MacCracken, “Preface,” In Herbert E. Mills, et al., College Women and the Social Sciences (New York, 1934); Mills, “Economics at Vassar College, 1890–1930,” in same, 283–303; Mabel Newcomer and Ruth G. Hutchinson, “Occupations of Vassar Alumnae: A Statistical Summary of a Selected Group,” in same, 318. Daniels, Bridges to the World, on gender-based faculty governance disputes.
- 12.
Newcomer, “Separation of State and Local Revenues in the United States,” (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1917). Vassar College Catalogue of the Officers and Students and in the annual reports, SC, VC.
- 13.
Newcomer to MacCracken, 1 March 1932, box 37; Newcomer to MacCracken, 24 December 1938, Louise Fargo Brown to MacCracken, 22 August 1938,box 45; Economics files, Henry Noble MacCracken (HNM) Papers, SC, VC. Barbara Libby, “A Statistical Analysis of Women in the Economics Profession, 1900–1940, Essays in Economic and Business History 5 (1987): 183.
- 14.
Horowitz, Alma Mater, 233–34; Penina Migdal Glazer and Miriam Slater, Unequal Colleagues: The Entrance of Women into the Professions, 1890–1940 (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 1987), 27–57.
- 15.
Nellie Neilson, “The Department of History and Political Science: History and Aims of the Department,” Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly (MHAQ) 4 (April 1920): 1–3. Norma Adams, “Nellie Neilson, 1873–1947,” and Helen Cam, “Nellie Neilson, Scholar,” MHAQ 31 (February 1948): 153–56; Margaret Hastings and Elisabeth G. Kimball, “Two Distinguished Medievalists—Nellie Neilson and Bertha Haven Putnam,” Journal of British Studies 18 (Spring 1979): 142–59. Elizabeth Green “Mount Holyoke in the Twentieth Century: Transcript of Interview with Ellen Deborah Ellis,” volume 9 (n.p., 1971–72), Mount Holyoke College Archives (MHCA).
- 16.
Amy Hewes, “Report of the Department of Economics and Sociology (RDES), 1923–1924,” ESDR, MHCA. Peter Groenewegen, “Amy Hewes,” Robert W. Dimand, Mary Ann Dimand, and Evelyn L. Forget, eds., A Biographical Dictionary of Women Economists (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2000), 209–11. Amy Hewes, Faculty Biographical Files (FBF), MHCA. Mary Jo Deegan, “Amy Hewes,” in Women in Sociology: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, ed. Mary Jo Deegan (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 169–71.
- 17.
Emma Woolley, “President’s Report, 1918–1919,” 2–3; Amy Hewes, “RDES, 1919–1920,” and “RDES, 1921–1922,” ESDR, MHCA.
- 18.
Report of the President, 1920–1923, Mount Holyoke College Bulletin (Series 17, November, 1923); Report of the President and Treasurer, 1923–1924, Mount Holyoke College Bulletin (MHCB) (Series 18, November 1924); “RDES, 1923–1924,” ESDR, MHCA.
- 19.
Mary Emma Woolley, “President’s Report, 1918–19,” MHCA. “Report(s) of the Department of Economics and Sociology, 1919–20, 1920–21, 1921–22,” EDSR, MHCA. Woolley, “Report of the President, 1920–23,” MHCB, Series 17, no. 2 (November 1923), 13–14. Madeleine P. Grant, “In Memoriam—Amy Hewes,” MHAQ in FF, box 1, file 1, MHCA.
- 20.
“Former Mt. Holyoke Economists Has a Lot to Say on European Front,” Holyoke Transcript-Telegram (August 26, 1952), 7, Ethel B. Dietrich Papers, FBF, MHCA. FBF, MHCA, on Comstock, Hewes, and Dietrich.
- 21.
Mary Breese Fuller, “Development of History and Government in Smith College, 1875–1920, with a List of Publications of the Faculty and Alumnae,” Smith College Studies in History (SCSH) 5, 3 (April 1920): 143–73.
- 22.
Most male faculty in history left for research universities. In contrast, women faculty scholars in history stayed for long periods of time and left to care for family. Charles H. Page, Fifty Years in the Sociological Enterprise: A Lucky Journey (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), ch. 4; Faculty Files, Smith College Archives (FF, SCA). Elizabeth Stoffregan May, in Jacqueline Van Voris, College: A Smith Mosaic (Smith College, 1975), 77; FF, SCA; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Volume I, Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash More, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 879; Esther Lowenthal, “Labor Policy of Oneida Community, Ltd.,” Journal of Political Economy 35 (February 1927): 114–26.
- 23.
Elizabeth Stoffregan May, in Jacqueline Van Voris, College: A Smith Mosaic (Smith College, 1975), 77. See also FF,SCA; Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, Volume I, Paula E. Hyman and Deborah Dash More, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1997), 879.
- 24.
Bacon, FF, SCA, published in Review of Economic Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association and the National Encyclopedia.
- 25.
“Suggested plan,” ca. 1932 (n.d.), Box 38, W.A. Neilson Papers, Smith College Archive (WAN, SCA); and other materials in Box 398, Presidential Papers (William A. Neilson) (PP,WAN), SCA.
- 26.
“Suggested plan,” ca. 1932 (n.d.), Box 38, WAN, SCA; and other materials in Box 398, PP,WAN, SCA. Child Workers in America (Robert M. McBride & Co.,1937).
- 27.
Esther Lowenthal, “Local History and Economic Theory,” 4,FF, Box 695, Esther Lowenthal, SCA; Katharine D. Lumpkin, “The Council of Industrial Studies,” Smith Alumnae Quarterly (November 1937): 31–32, SCA.
- 28.
See, for example, Lumpkin, “Brief Resume of the Work of the Council of Industrial Studies, 1932–1938,” Box 398, PP (WAN), and “Report of the Director of Research of the Council of Industrial Studies” in Report(s) of the President, 1933–1938, SCA. See also SCSH, vols 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 33, 37.
- 29.
Anna Heubeck Knipp and Thaddeau P. Thomas, The History of Goucher College (Baltimore: Goucher College, 1938), 414–17; Amy Thompson McCandless, The Past in the Present: Women’s Higher Education in the Twentieth-Century American South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999); Frederick O. Musser, The History of Goucher College, 1930–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
- 30.
Knipp and Thomas, The History of Goucher College, 342–52; McCandless, The Past in the Present, 188.
- 31.
Carroll files at Goucher College Archives (GCA). Her dissertation, “Labor and Politics: Attitudes of the American Federation of Labor toward Legislation and Politics” (University of Chicago, 1920) won the Hart, Schaffner, and Marx Prize in economics in 1923.
- 32.
Pancoast files, GCA and Alice Jimmyer Reynolds, “Elinor Pancoast,” Goucher Alumnae Quarterly 27 (Summer 1959): 11–12.
- 33.
Knipp and Thomas, Goucher College, 548.
- 34.
Reynolds, “Elinor Pancoast,” 11.
- 35.
McCandless, The Past in the Present, 76–79.
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Dzuback, M.A. (2018). Research at Women’s Colleges, 1890–1940. In: Nash, M.A. (eds) Women’s Higher Education in the United States. Historical Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59084-8_7
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