Home Work

Ruby Oram is assistant professor of practice in the Department of History at Texas State University.

"Exploring educational sites that range from carceral institutions for girls to public high schools, Ruby Oram’s Home Work broadens our conception of turn-of-the-twentieth-century school reform and our understanding of women’s progressivism. Focused on Chicago as a case study, she analyzes public education as a site of struggle between middle-class women reformers and working-class girls, both Black and white. The outcomes of those struggles, Oram demonstrates, illuminate the sources of gender- and race-inequalities in public education for decades thereafter."

• Group AbbreviationsIntroduction: The Girl Problem1. The “Girl Problem” or the “Servant Problem”?: Policing Girlhood Labor in Illinois Carceral Schools, 1870–19102. Fit for Motherhood: Regulating Girlhood Health and Labor in Chicago Public Schools, 1888–19153. The Bane of the Tenement: Educating Immigrant Daughters for Scientific Housekeeping, 1890–19104. A School Built Around the Girl: Education for Paid and Unpaid Labor in Chicago High Schools, 1900–19155. Sex, Spending, and “Going Astray”: Vocational Guidance Counseling for Girls of Legal Working Age, 1910–1920s6. A Nation of Good Homes: Labor, Citizenship, and Home Economics for American Girls, 1917–1930ConclusionAcknowledgmentsArchive AbbreviationsNotesIndex