The Profession with a 1,000 Job Titles: Historicizing Home Economics, Gender, and Society at the University of Oklahoma

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a curriculum history of the School of Home Economics at the University of Oklahoma. The primary research question asks what the role that the school’s home economics curriculum had in creating and reinforcing gendered stereotypes of the white woman. This history identifies differing curriculum from three points in time during the 1915-1990 existence of the school. Through this history the relationships of faculty members, students, and alumnae is brought out as it became an important component to the educative process within the school. The history and stories that are being explored though this work is that of white women as the university was an exclusionary place for Black and Brown students. To be sure, in places like the University of Oklahoma, home economics in its early history was explicitly a space that upheld and normalized whiteness through the education of white women. This study utilizes a documentary research methodology of archival artifacts from the University of Oklahoma Archives at the Western History Collections, as well as an analysis of secondary sources. This project aims to help to help fill the current gap in home economics research with little research on the history of home economics curriculum and the individual university programs that provided this training, while also adding to the literature on the role of education and gender identity for white women.