Dividing Gender: Domesticity and Work in Indian Boarding School Mathematics Curricula, 1879–1932

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Eighteen
  In Roundtable Session: Complicated Turf: Exploring and Expanding Borders and Boundaries of Being and Belonging (Table 1)

Abstract

In this paper, we address the thread of cisheteropatriarchal structures in the mathematics curriculum from the Indian boarding school system during the administration of Estelle Reel. Specifically, we focus our analysis on how gender is associated with housework in math word problems. We argue that these problems reflect how ideologies of gender oppression are a fundamental aspect and extension of settler colonial capitalism within the United States (Nakano Glenn, 2015). Theoretically, we draw upon prior Marxist feminist work that parse out the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy (Federici 1975; Vogel 1983). Further, we directly connect these theoretical approaches in the analysis of the mathematical content to broader U.S. federal policy and reformist efforts (Stremlau, 2005) during our period of study, 1879-1932.

Authors

• Luke Kim, Kenyon College
  Presenting Author

• Mary Smith, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charles Sepulveda, The University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cynthia Benally, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kehaulani Natsuko Vaughn, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• José Francisco Gutiérrez, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author