¿Femininity¿ and the History of Women’s Education

Tim Allender is Professor and Chair of History and Curriculum at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Stephanie Spencer is Professor of History of Women's Education at the University of Winchester, UK.

This book draws on recent deconstructions around the idea of 'femininity' as a social, racial and class construct and explores the diversity of spaces that may be defined as educational that range from institutional contexts to family, to professional outlooks, to racial identity, to defining community and religious groupings. It explores how notions of femininity change across time and place, and within individual lives. Such changes take place at the interface of external forces and individual agency. The application of the notion of 'femininity' that assumes a consistent definition of the term is interrogated by the authors, leading to a discussion of the rich possibilities for new directions in research into women's lives across time, place, and individual life histories.

Draws on recent deconstructions around the idea of 'femininity' as a social, racial and class construct

1. Shifting 'femininities': multifaceted realms of historical educational inquiry- Tim Allender and Stephanie Spencer.- 2. 'Unnatural' Women and Natural Science: changing femininity and expanding educational sites through women's pursuit of natural science- Ruth Watts.- 3. African American Women, Femininity and their History In Physical Education and Sports in American Higher Education:  from World War I through the mid-century- Linda M. Perkins.- 4. Suzanne Karpelès' encounters in Indochina and Europe in 1931: multiple femininities, colonial relations and educative sites- Joyce Goodman.- 5. Troubling Gender Relations with the Appointment of 'That Lady Inspector' in Post-suffrage South Australia- Kay Whitehead.- 6. Shifting Spaces of Femininity: the everyday life of girl guides in Hong Kong 1921-1941- Stella Meng Wang.- 7. 'I turned into the boorish, stiff, unpleasant teenager that he expected, and that was what I immediately therefore became':  negotiating the 'risk' of femininity in teenage girls' reading in 1960s Britain- Stephanie Spencer.- 8. 'A great builder': female enterprise, architectural ambition and the construction of convents- Deirdre Raftery and Deirdre Bennett.- 9. Reconfiguring Women and Empire: sex, race and femininity in British India, 1785-1922- Tim Allender.- 10. Histories of women's education and shifting frames of 'femininity'- Stephanie Spencer and Tim Allender.