Studying Objects, Objectifying Students: Natural History at Women's Colleges in Postbellum New York State

Abstract

Studying Objects, Objectifying Students:Natural History at Women's Colleges in Postbellum New York State Andrew Fiss (bio) The Civil War transformed American higher education. According to the new, synthetic work Reconstructing the Campus: Higher Education and the American Civil War (2012), the Civil War had immediate, dramatic, lasting effects on American colleges. Because of the importance of colleges for providing recruits, supplies, and related professionals, federal and state governments took a greater role in supporting, funding, and monitoring colleges.1 Even in New York State, so far north of the fighting, the Board of Regents became particularly invested in observing trends in higher education, especially in drawing a distinction between "colleges" and "academies."2 Through connections with military preparedness, postbellum colleges experienced curricular growth in scientific/industrial education and also demographic changes, particularly in the increased incorporation of women.3 This paper investigates the confluence of these postbellum trends in natural history education at the four women's institutions that the New York State Regents recognized as colleges.4 At the three that were particularly prosperous, changes in academic and student life followed from attempts to make natural history familiar to students. At Vassar College, Rutgers Female College, and Ingham University, faculty members, administrators, and architects transferred all elements of "familiar science" to the campus. This genre of English-language children's literature emphasized the "familiar" through family-oriented conversation [End Page 205] about common objects. As historian Melanie Keene has shown, such texts had three major components: a family setting, informal conversations, and the use of everyday objects.5 At Vassar College (founded in 1861 and opened in 1865), students encountered a familial version of natural history in the parlor of the college mother, the "lady principal." There they viewed and discussed zoological specimens in a setting constructed to seem domestic. At Rutgers Female College (founded in 1839 and re-chartered in 1869), professors encouraged students to develop conversational fluency about specimens in the natural history cabinets. In limited encounters, students developed a personal understanding of specimens and an ability to extemporize moral tales from them. At Ingham University (founded in 1837, re-chartered in 1852, re-chartered again in 1857, and expanded in 1870) and later Vassar College, campus architects designed multipurpose structures that made natural history exhibitions literally central to student life. Called museums, these new buildings acted more like prototypes of student unions, as they contained spaces for art, music, student clubs, athletics, and recreation. There, students' encounters with specimens became an everyday occurrence.6 Such transformations did not occur so dramatically at the fourth women's institution that the Regents recognized as a college: Elmira Female College (chartered in 1853 and opened in 1855). Its financial difficulties prevented major investments in curriculum and infrastructure at the time.7 As other historians have shown, Elmira's requests for state aid set an important precedent for the future of American higher education.8 Still, Elmira's negotiations kept the faculty and administrators from engaging in the same institutional reforms as elsewhere. In the late 1860s, college officials at Vassar College, Rutgers Female College, and Ingham University constructed natural history as appropriate for women's higher education through familiar science, particularly emphasizing connections to family life, conversation, and daily exposure. [End Page 206] In observing the emergence of these new methods in science education, this paper builds on the literature on "familiar science" from historian Melanie Keene. In her books and articles, Keene observes the growth in nineteenth-century British texts that used the phrases "familiar lectures" or "familiar conversations" in beginning a science-oriented book, article, lecture, or even fictional story. These texts, intended for children as well as adults, encouraged readers to see science all around them. Focusing on common objects, from toothpick cases to eggs and tea, they modeled domestic conversations that extrapolated from sensory observations to scientific theories and vocabulary.9 The creation and implementation of new pedagogical techniques at women's colleges in New York State partially stemmed from the popularity of this genre for providing introductions to natural history. Though they did not often comment on this connection, officials at women's colleges in New York State institutionalized familiar science. Meanwhile...