Claiming access to elite curriculum: identification and division at the Harvard Annex

Abstract

This article analyses the rhetorical practices deployed by the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women (SCIW) that sought to gain and maintain curricular access to Harvard University in the late 19^th century Using Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification as an analytical framework, the article considers how the SCIW composed Burkean rhetorics of identification and division towards achieving this goal. The SCIW’s identificatory practices are worth serious attention because of the full range of rhetorical modes these women leveraged. Their identificatory rhetorics not only took the discursive form of writing, but the SCIW also articulated their claims through the rhetorical use of students’ bodies as well as the built environment in Cambridge. This examination of the robust rhetorical repertoire of the SCIW prompts scholars of curriculum studies to expand their analytical vision by considering how groups such as the SCIW not only gain curricular access to elite sites of education but also how they maintain and make use of such access.

Keywords:

• Kenneth Burke
• women
• Harvard
• identification
• curriculum

Notes

1. William Francis Allen reiterates this point in his 1870 article, ‘The Sexes in College’, when he writes, ‘The admission of women to our colleges and universities is, if not the most important educational problem yet to be solved, at least the most pressing and the most clamorous for an immediate solution. It hangs closely together with the question of female suffrage, and, indeed may almost be said to depend on that’ (Allen 1870: 134). An 1883 article in the Chautauquan offers yet another example of this connection between women’s rights and co-education: ‘Rising in interest and importance above every other phase of the ‘woman question’ is that of her education, her higher education, and from this the question of co-education’ (Anon. 1883: 3).

2. Matthew Vassar, for instance, set the goal that his institution ‘should be to women what Yale and Harvard are to young men’ (qtd. Geiger 2000: 189).

3. Sex in Education: A Fair Chance for Girls was reprinted 17 times in 13 years.

4. In Frona Marie Brooks’s essay published in Wide Awake, one student explains to another why she’s decided to go to the Annex instead of Smith College for women: ‘[M]y brother enters Harvard this year and I thought there would be great satisfaction in learning just what the boys do in the first college in the country, and in passing the same examinations’ (Brooks 1887: 108).

5. Harvard did accommodate women in some ways through the Harvard examinations for women and the University lecture series. See Schwager (1982, 2004) for a more detailed history.

6. Beyond those who counted themselves among Harvard’s elite, members of rival colleges even granted Harvard’s superiority on this score: at one Harvard dinner, a Yale graduate conceded that schools such as his own recognized the overpowering ‘muscle of Harvard’ (Anon. 1881b: 5).

7. For discussion of the Women’s Education Association, see Schwager (1982; 2004).

8. While men such as Arthur Gilman participated significantly in the SCIW, Agassiz and her female colleagues represented the public face of the society.

9. While the SCIW plan was indeed unique; there were other ‘annexes’ in the USA. See Woody’s (1980) chapter on ‘Coordinate colleges for women’. Additionally, leaders in the USA closely followed conversations regarding women’s higher education in England. They were particularly interested in Newnham and Girton—women’s institutions that functioned as annexes to Cambridge University. See Miller-Bernal and Poulson (2007); Murphy and Reftery (2004); Phillips (2010); Stephen (2010); Tullberg (1998); and Vickery (1999) for more details.

10. Articles by Annex students and alumni employ the negative in similar ways: in the narrative essay ‘How One “Annex Maid” Began Her Career’, the characters laugh at misperceptions of the Annex as a co-educational institution. One character reflects, ‘Considering that we have nothing whatever to do with the Harvard youth, it is curious how some will insist on considering the ‘Annex’ co-educational—as they say’ (Brooks 1887: 108, emphasis mine).

11. A contributor to the New York Times also remarked on the disinterest on the part of Harvard towards the Annex, defining it as an ‘Old Maids’ Paradise […] undeserving of [Harvard men’s] attention or consideration’ (Anon. 1891: 11).

12. See Simmons and Campbell for a discussion of how some Harvard professors deviated from this plan and how Annex and, later, Radcliffe students spoke back to and attempted to revise the Harvard education replicated for them.

13. Music, traditionally understood as an ornamental study, is listed in this circular. However, the course would have also been offered at Harvard and the details of the courses include ‘history of music’ and ‘harmony and counterpoint’ (Private 1890: 2).

14. Other factors included the fact that there was not stable instruction from Harvard professors and there were no post-graduate classes.