For Further Reading: An annotated bibliography compiled by students in HD 455: Research in The History of Home Economics taught by Professor Joan Jacobs Brumberg

Berlage, Nancy. The Establishment of an Applied Social Science: Home Economists, Science, and Reform at Cornell University, 1870-1930 in Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years. Ed. Helen Silverberg. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998.

ILR Library (in Ives Hall) - call number H53.U5 G45 1998.

Olin Library - call number H53.U5 G45x 1998.

Berlage uses the development of home economics at Cornell University to demonstrate the complex nature of the field, and also to comment on the difficulties home economics faculties faced in establishing themselves within a research university. She characterizes home economics as an applied social science and shows why that is problematic. Berlage points to the paradox of the field, showing that while home economics did reinforce traditional womens ideals, it also gave women a chance to study science and develop a public voice.

Beyer, Glenn H., ed. The Cornell Kitchen. Ithaca: New York State College of Home Economics in association with the Cornell University Housing Research Center, 1952. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924001439474.

Fine Arts Library (in Sibley Hall) - call number NA8330.B46.

Hotel Administration Library (Statler Hall) - call number TX653.B48.

Library Annex - call number TX653.B57.

Mann Library - call number TX653.B57.

Olin Library - call number NA 8330 B57+.

This book deals with the history, standards, design and technological aspects of the modern American kitchen. It condenses and analyzes the research of Cornell Professor Glenn Beyers project to establish a set of kitchen design criteria which considered both human and technological requirements. Chapter four, by far the most interesting chapter, discusses the need to consider the socio-psychological aspects of kitchen design to ensure the satisfaction of its user, and outlines different optimum kitchen layouts depending on ones orientation towards life in general. The text functions best not as a source of functional information, but as a cultural artifact, capturing the ideology and language of the interdisciplinary techniques used by home economists.

Burman, Barbara, ed. The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking. Oxford: Berg, 1999.

Mann Library - call number TT504.C85x 1999.

Burman explores the broad impact of home sewing on women's experience by looking at the interplay of gender, social class, technology, consumption and visual representation. Burman provides insight into the importance of the culture of sewing in womens lives, a subject often overlooked or marginalized due to its association with traditional femininity and domesticity. For information about home economics and sewing in America, see chapter ten.

Brumberg, Joan Jacobs and Nancy Tomes. Women In The Professions: A Research Agenda For American Historians. Reviews in American History. 10 (1982) 275 - 296.

Olin Library - call number E171.R45.

This article examines how historical writing before l982 handled the issue of women in the professions both male-dominated ones (such as medicine, law, and the academy) and also the feminized service professions (such as teaching, nursing, social work, librarianship). Tomes and Brumberg note that while historians have written extensively on upper class and working class women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they have shied away from the complexities of the middle-class female professional. The authors argue that due to the constraints family and society placed on women until very recently, the professionalization process was different for women than for men. They suggest alternative standards by which to assess women in the professions, and they suggest that home economics fits the model of the feminized service professions. This is an excellent introductory article for anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of issues that guided the research for this exhibit. It has stimulated a great deal of historical work on American women in the professions since its publication twenty years ago.

Nerad, Maresi. The Academic Kitchen: A Social History of Gender Stratification at the University of California, Berkeley. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987.

ILR Library (in Ives Hall) - call number TX285.U52 N47x 1999.

Nerad traces the development of home economics at another land-grant institution, the University of California at Berkeley. She uses the story of Agnes Fay Morgan and other Berkeley women faculty to argue that home economics faculty were accorded second-class status within the larger university. Nerad points out that the few women who did earn Ph.D.s in the hard sciences could not find employment in their disciplines, so they were pushed into departments of home economics. Many embraced home economics, however, as the best way to cope with the male-dominated university environment that excluded them from positions of power and authority. Nerads discussion of the second-class status of home economics points to the problems home economists had in establishing their professional identity.

Rose, Flora. A Growing College: Home Economics at Cornell University/New York State College of Human Ecology. Ithaca: New York State College of Human Ecology, 1969. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924003529017.

Mann Library - call number TX285.N56 R796.

Rose's book is primarily an institutional history of the College of Home Economics to l940; the period from l940 to l965 was covered by Esther Stocks, Director of Placement from l933 to l964. For most standard reference questions, Rose is the place to begin. This work includes important primary source documents, and is filled with fascinating insights into the world of home economists, such as the controversy over admitting home economics graduates into the American Association of University Women.

Rose, Flora, Pioneers in Home Economics. Practical Home Economics. 25 (1947).

Library Annex and Mann Library - call number TX1.P89.

This series of eight articles, written by the one of the pioneers in home economics at Cornell, provides a wonderful account of the professionalization of home economics as well as of the women and men behind the scenes.

Rossiter, Margaret W. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies Until 1940. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

ILR Library (Ives Hall), Olin Library, and Uris Library - call number Q130.R83.

Mann Library - call number Q130.R83 1982.

Rossiter places home economics in the context of American women in science. Throughout the book she demonstrates how stereotypes of "woman" and "scientist" were considered irreconcilable. In this encyclopedic book, she examines womens early efforts to receive a scientific education, their contributions to scientific knowledge, and their struggles to gain entry and develop professional careers in chemistry, physics, biology, psychology, geology, and botany. Rossiter illustrates how women, in response to discrimination, created career fieldssuch as home economicsthat incorporated their scientific knowledge and served womens needs. She also discusses professional societies and shows how they kept women out both formally and informally. In her discussion of home economics at Cornell, she analyzes interactions between the home economics department and the university administration, stressing the low status accorded to professorships in home economics. Some of the charts and texts also reveal information about Cornells role in educating women in other scientific fields, such as psychology, in the early twentieth century.

Scanlon, Jennifer, Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies' Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture. New York and London: Routledge. 1995.

Olin Library - call number HC110.C6 S28 1995.

Uris Library - call number HC110.C6 S27x 1995

In this cultural history based on evidence from the Ladies' Home Journal, Scanlon offers a new and provocative perspective on the magazine, the advertising industry, and womens lives during the early twentieth century. Because the book explores the contradictions of a social agenda for women that promoted both traditional roles and the promises of a growing consumer culture, it is extremely relevant to the history of home economics. The title is a phrase coined by Lois Ardery of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1924. Ardery and others hoped consumer goods would satisfy womens deepest dreams and desires. Scanlon shows that the magazines domestic ideal focused on white, middle-class women readers, but that it failed to meet the needs of this target audience. Scanlon argues persuasively that the advertising proffered did not satisfy "inarticulate longings for personal autonomy, economic independence, intimacy, sensuality, self-worth, or social recognition.

Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1986.

Hotel Administration Library (Statler Hall) - call number TX173.S44 1986.

This book takes a critical view of goals and activities in home economics. Shapiro, who writes for Newsweek magazine, focuses on the early cooking school connection and a cast of characters (such as Fanny Farmer) who had little of the Progressive Era reformist zeal of the founders at Cornell or the women in the American Home Economics Association. American cookery and cuisine are central to Shapiros interpretation, and she mocks them, as well as the women who thought that better food was the way to a better America. The title is taken from a 1905 recipe, for a salad that suspended shredded cabbage and pimentos in lime gelatin.