Democracy needs education: public performance, peace, and pedagogy, Julia Grace Wales

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the academic life of Julia Grace Wales as a public intellectual and peace activist. The study addresses the largely neglected field of female educators and peace activists in the early to mid-twentieth century through a case study of one woman’s lifelong popular education campaign to achieve peace and social justice. In these initiatives of lectures, publications, poetry, hymn, memoir, textbook, and correspondence with leaders in religious, academic, and government institutions, Wales took seriously her role as an academic in a democratic society to resolve international conflicts without war. As a public educator, she emerged at a time of growing professionalisation and specialisation among American universities. Although Wales was unique in her position as a woman, academic, and peace activist, we learn how she capitalised upon multiple profiles to advance her point of view. In this article, we assert that it was from her position on the margins that she drew her strength and determined her actions. In framing Wales’ initiatives throughout her career, we gain a glimpse as to the complexity of her motivation to expand the profile of academics beyond universities’ walls.