ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Plural Worlds of Science and Shifting Perspectives on Home Economics, 1870-1990

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

In the 19th century, recently educated women scientists found a place for professionalization within home economics departments and careers based around domestic science. As shifting views on women’s role in professions changed, and as science itself became more institutionalized throughout the twentieth century, home economics, too, underwent a transformation. This panel explores the variety of home economics discourses and perspectives in different parts of the world, at different times. Together, our papers analyze the plural worlds of home economics alongside shifting concepts of science and knowledge-making. As the papers in the panel demonstrate, different contexts shifted perceptions of home economics, from convincing the public of the value of science in the early 20th century, to Cold War international exchange with India, to how practitioners understand new names for their discipline at the end of the 20th century. Each paper examines how gender underpinned discourse about the home, community, the world, and science’s place therein. Taken together, the papers interrogate how discourses about home economics and science are intertwined as both focus on practical knowledge for daily living, yet both shifted throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries in varying social and political contexts.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Bethany Anderson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Individual Presentations

• Home Economics and Science Communication - Serenity S Sutherland, SUNY Oswego

• Changing names, changing perspectives, and alumni discontent - Gwen Kay, SUNY Oswego

• Plural Worlds, Domestic Sciences: Cold War Home-Economics Links between Iowa, USA and Baroda, India - Amy S Bix, Iowa State University