Elliott West — Growing Up in Twentieth-Century America

British Journal of Educational Studies, 2019

will also find much of interest, as the role of women religious in girls' education remains a prominent one.

History of Education, 2019

Pneuma, 2011

Ruelas, Chair of Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Communication at Patten University, summarizes the contributions of twenty-seven women that founded significant Wesleyan Holiness and Pentecostal ministries, institutions, and universities. He divides this book into the faith-traditions and writes brief biographical sketches on each of the selected women. Ruelas proposes that women who have founded ministries are often overlooked in the writing of history, thus he champions a continued effort to emphasize the work, contribution, and involvement of women, in order to give honor where it due and to encourage women (and men) to pursue their God-given dreams and calling. He employs a genre of short biographical descriptions and collections, supplying a few tidbits of new information, and he has added several new names not found in other similar books. The primary value of this book rests on Ruelas' emphasis on the founding mothers of the institutions of higher education. The great challenge that Ruelas has encountered is that of finding credible primary sources. Historiographers have too often failed to give accurate credit to female founders, thus primarily tell, and secondary sources retell, the story of good men, while neglecting to reveal that these good men have followed a path blazed by great women. In this regard, the secondary sources utilized by Ruelas do not always have the most accurate information and unfortunately there are a few inaccurate details repeated from his selected resources. This should not detract from the contribution that his book makes to the crucial subject at hand, for this critique is not meant to diminish his effort; rather, it points to the continued need for meticulous research. The book would be improved by adding a short list for further reading at the conclusion of each biography, although the footnotes are helpful in this regard. One of the overarching themes of Women and the Landscape of American Higher Education is written between the lines. It is the theme of subtle networking relationships between many (if not all) of the characters profiled. Countless encounters and interactions occurred between these twenty-seven women, consequently both documented and undocumented interactions can provide the researcher with connecting lines of thought, doctrine, and entrepreneurial tenacity. Thereby, another overarching theme becomes more prevalent to the reader of this book, one that notices the nineteenth and twentieth century changes in the spiritual, social, and ecclesial dynamics of institutional founding and building. The women in Ruelas' book were founding ministries while America was in the throes of Suffrage. While American socio-cultural expectation and political legislation was denying rudimentary rights of women, the Spirit of God was urging women to follow the calling of God, in spite of the disapproval of men. These two themes should cause readers to sit up and take notice, not just in a reflective look at the past, but also in discerning look at the present. Ruelas points to the contrast between a tacit grassroots intuition, which is demonstrated in the story of the women initiators, over and against a potentially self-absorbed disconnected patriarchy, who unintentionally or intentionally wrote them out of the historical record. This should cause readers to question if the patriarchy of these organizations attempted to modify its history to fit its

Women with Capacity: Gender and Theological Education, 2021

The implementation of issues concerning gender and the participation of female students is often mentioned as crucial for theological education that strives to promote the values of the Kingdom of God. However, gender inequality affects theological education. Despite the acceptance of women ordination and almost three decades of more attention for gender, male dominance remains unchanged within theological education, the female voice is marginalised, and gender issues are often viewed with suspicion. A small-scale project among female students in a bachelor of theology program reveals that in particular, the hidden curriculum determines their experiences. Though these students considered themselves positively as women with capacity, positively impacted by their studies, they had the feeling that they were not valued by their capacities but judged because of their sex.

This paper analyzes the historical foundation of women’s education, and evaluates the effects of the education of women on American society and higher education. In addition, the paper evaluates how specific changing social forces have profoundly influenced women’s education. Finally, the paper will include a synthesis of social, economic, and political influences revealing those effects on the education of women.

Feminist Formations, 2012

, putting these materials in the context of a larger nineteenth-century discourse culture on American narratives about identity, class, whiteness, and gender. Focusing specifically on Western's role as the educator of wives for home missionaries and its particular location in the Midwest, the article argues that Western's public materials relied on, and in the process helped to create, a complicated gendered logic, in that its public relations campaign and institutional governance documents and operating strategies made appeals to both masculine and feminine idioms. As demonstrated through the discourses housed in the Western College archive, the Western Female Seminary offers one piece of evidence in a much larger schema for seeing the temporal, contextual, and spatial specificity of the workings of gender in relation to the education of women.

Advances in Gender and Education, 2009

Social History/Histoire Sociale, 1992

The Sunday schools are valuable to our understanding ofsocial history, especially women's history. As Sunday school teachers, married women had volunteer opportunities to follow their vocations in a society which discouraged themfrom working outside ofthe home. This paper describeswomen' s places in the CanadianMethodist, Presbyterian and United Church Sunday school networks during the early twentieth century and analyzes their contributions to the teacher training programme promoted by officiais. It also demonstrates how the new theology shaping the Sunday schools reinforced women's roles as nurturers ofchildren while investing them with significant roles in the church. Les écoles du dimanche sont importantes pour notre connaissance de l'histoire sociale, surtout celle des femmes. Dans ces écoles, les institutrices, dont la majorité était mariée, poursuivaient ainsi leur vocation d'enseignantes dans une société qui les décourageait de travailler en dehors de la maison. Cet article examine le rôle desfemmes dans le réseau que formèrent, au début du xx.c siècle, les écoles du dimanche des Églises canadiennes méthodistes, presbytériennes et unies, notamment leur app'ort au programme de formation des enseignantes préconisé par les dirigeants de ces Églises. Il souligne également que la nouvelle théologie inspirant ces écoles a renforcé le rôle des /,emmes dans l'éducation des enfants et leur a conféré une place importante au sein de ces Eglises.

History of Education Quarterly, 2016

Texts introducing students to women's and gender history typically emphasize how gender refers to the social meanings attached to sexual difference, which vary over time and across societies and cultures. As one of these texts explains, “Definitions of what is masculine and feminine are learned as each society instructs its members from infancy through adulthood as to what behavior and personality attributes are appropriate for males and females of that generation.” Given wide agreement that gender is learned, it is surprising how seldom the places and people who institutionalize learning appear in the texts used to teach U.S. women's and gender history. Teachers are remarkably scarce in the literature, even though vast numbers of U.S. women have taught since the mid-nineteenth century. The reasons for this absence are not clear. Perhaps teachers' social location, at the murky boundaries of the working and middle classes, has contributed to their omission from sharply de...

Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2014