Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; PART ONE Academic Life; CHAPTER 1 What's in a Name? Antebellum Female Colleges; CHAPTER 2 From Embroidery to Greek: Raising Academic Levels; CHAPTER 3 Educating a Lady: The Formal Curriculum; PART TWO The World of the Female School; CHAPTER 4 The Yankee Dispersion: Faculty Life in Female Schools; CHAPTER 5 Trying to Look Very Fascinating: The Informal Curriculum; CHAPTER 6 Sisters: The Development of Sororities; CHAPTER 7 Lovers: Romantic Friendships; CHAPTER 8 Queens: May Day Queens as Symbol and Substance
Epilogue: The Enduring Image of the Southern BelleNotes; Select Bibliography; Name Index; Subject Index
Summary
The American South before the Civil War was the site of an unprecedented social experiment in women's education. The South offered women an education explicitly designed to be equivalent to that of men, while maintaining and nurturing the gender conventions epitomized by the ideal of the Southern belle. This groundbreaking work provides us with an intimate picture of the entire social experience of antebellum women's colleges and seminaries in the South, analyzing the impact of these colleges upon the cultural construction of femininity among white Southern women, and their legacy for higher e