1. Thoughts on the History of Women’s Education, Theories of Power, and This Volume: An Introduction -- 2. “She Pursued her Life-Work”: The Life Lessons of American Women Educators, 1800-1860 -- 3. “Cruel and Wicked Prejudice”: Racial Exclusion and the Female Seminary Movement in the Antebellum North -- 4. The Endorsed and Spontaneous Reading and Writing Exercises of Students in Early State Normal Schools in Massachusetts (1839-1850) -- 5. Chinese Female Students in the United States -- 6. The Black Female Professoriate at Howard University, 1926-1977 -- 7. Research at Women’s Colleges, 1890-1940 -- 8. A Coeducational Pathway to Political and Economic Citizenship: Women’s Student Government and a Philosophy and Practice of Women’s U.S. Higher Coeducation Between 1890 and 1945 -- 9. From Haskell to Hawaii: One American Indian Woman’s Educational Journey -- 10. The Hallmarks of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the West: Women Religious and Education in the United States -- 11. Before Chicana Civil Rights: Three Generations of Mexican American Women in Higher Education in the Southwest, 1920-1965 -- 12. Building the New Scholarship of Women’s Higher Educational History, 1965-1985 -- 13. “The Rest is All Drag”: Trans-gressive Women in Higher Education History -- Epilogue. .

This volume presents new perspectives on the history of higher education for women in the United States. By introducing new voices and viewpoints into the literature on the history of higher education from the early nineteenth century through the 1970s, these essays address the meaning diverse groups of women have made of their education or their exclusion from education, and delve deeply into how those experiences were shaped by concepts of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin. Nash demonstrates how an examination of the history of women’s education can transform our understanding of educational institutions and processes more generally.