Manliness and the Culture of Self-Improvement: The University of North Carolina in the 1890s–1900s

Abstract

As it entered the ranks of the “modern” university in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the University of North Carolina (UNC), as did other universities of the time, embraced the development of manhood and self-improvement as part of its mission. But unlike the social and economic pressures on northern and eastern universities to emphasize a more aggressive model of manhood, UNC's southern context allowed for a more flexible approach. UNC's leaders encouraged students to find for themselves a healthy mix of the older, more restrained Victorian notion of manhood with elements of the newer one, physical fitness being one example. The school's emphasis on inquiry and investigation, and the student body's racial and gender exclusivity, combined to permit a degree of openness as to what constituted an appropriate model of manhood.