Did you know that the first women in Minnesota to earn college degrees were Methodist Episcopal women who used their education for lives of service and social justice?
In this video lecture, I discuss Methodist Episcopal attitudes toward women and collegiate education, especially as they took shape among those living on America’s emerging western frontier preceding the Civil War. Nineteenth Century Methodists were among the vanguard discussing new social roles for women, which were considered in the early Methodist journal the Ladies’ Repository, and put into practice by the first graduates of Hamline University.
This talk is based in part on research completed for the article “Nineteenth Century Methodists and Coeducation: The Case of Hamline University,” published in the October 2008 edition of Methodist History, which can be downloaded from the General Commission on Archives and History of The United Methodist Church via the Methodist History Journal at http://archives.gcah.org/handle/10516/237.
Enjoy!