Young Women as Educators in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Building upon this year's C19 conference theme,
"Prospects: A New Century," this panel
will explorerepresentations of young adult women
as educators in nineteenth-century American novels,
short stories, and/or autobiographies. We envision a
panel that explores the broad concept of educational and
professional “prospects” as they became increasingly available
to women across social, economic, and racial borders, while
attending as well to how those prospects were shaped,
constrained, experienced, and represented. We are especially
interested in paper proposals on the role of the
governess figure in nineteenth-century American literature
but welcome a variety of other approaches to the topic that
will help us consider how female educators, as portrayed in
both fictional and non-fictional texts, not only influenced
the future "prospects" of their young pupils, but were also,
as the result of their positions, exposed to new experiences,
ideas, people and opportunities. Possible topics and approaches
include the following, among others:

- The figure of the governess in the literary imagination.
- Narratives of women, education and reform
(e.g. female educators in the anti-slavery movement,
the Temple School, and rural freedman’s
schools in the post-Civil War South).
- Young women teachers in the “school story.”
- The role of the child in the governess narrative.
- Representations and/or intersections of race, gender,
sexuality and class in narratives of female educators.
- Children's perspectives on and responses to female educators.
- Scenes of educational instruction in women’s slave narratives.
- Sentimentalism and women in the classroom.
- Women's rights and the female educator.
- Discipline and pedagogy at home and school.
- Female educators and the gothic and/or sentimental novel.
- European governesses in the American imagination.

Kristen Proehl
Department of English
Clemson University
801 Strode Tower
Clemson, SC 29634
Email: kproehl@remove-this.clemson.edu