The Female Collegian in Black and White: Institutional Photography of Women Students 1895-1915

This dissertation examines how photography promoted the idea of higher education for women at the turn of the twentieth century. Advocates employed photography not only to advance their cause but also to define and categorize female students. Three very different case studies from Smith College, the Fitchburg Normal School, and the Hampton Institute demonstrate how photographs relayed visual and societal messages which imply that although women were capable of intellectual endeavor, they would not transgress traditional gender, class, or racial lines. The collections were chosen for their depth, and they demonstrate how school administrators and photographers conceived three differing cultural constructions of women students. Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, represents a private, single-sex institution, where middle-class white women received a liberal arts education. Smith owns the archive of Katherine Elizabeth McClellan, an alumna and commercial photographer. McClellan's photographs emphasize both the scholarly achievements and the lady-like behavior of students, connoting the idea that middle-class women would willingly return to home and hearth after graduation. The second case studies the State Normal School at Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a state-sponsored institution that trained teachers for elementary schools. The Fitchburg Normal School engaged local amateur photographers for its Catalogue and Circular. The administration maintained strict control over representations, publishing only those photographs that stressed the docility of young women learning modern pedagogical methods. Photographs from Fitchburg demonstrate how women from working-class families were socialized to accept their lot as junior teachers under constant male supervision. The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute comprises the final case. A private, coeducational school in Virginia, Hampton trained African- and native-American women to teach vocational skills. In addition to serving as head of the art department, the photographer Leigh Richmond Miner made images for the Hampton Institute's promotional literature. Miner represented minority women students as domestics-in-training rather than as teachers of vocational skills. While his images advance the idea that minority women were capable of adapting to middle-class standards, Miner's portrayals also suggest that they would not challenge white, male power structures.