Book description
Neither a cosy anecdotal inside story, nor a straightforward account of
women's struggle to enter the university, this history of St Hugh's
College, Oxford looks both upstairs and downstairs, at dons and
undergraduates but also at domestic staff. What did it mean for the
would-be school teacher, the flapper on the motorcycle, the depression
era grammar-school girl, and the student revolutionary of the 1970s to
re-invent themselves as educated women? Who remained excluded from this
emancipated identity? What were the tensions between old and new
generations of dons and undergraduates? And what of the first
Principal's notorious belief in time-travel? In this innovative study,
Schwartz explores the relationship between personal and collective
identity in one of the first higher educational establishments run by
and for women, during a period in which women's role both in society and
university education changed beyond recognition. Based on new and
original research, A Seroius Endeavour offers a fresh and sometimes
disquieting perspective on the history of gender and education in
twentieth-century Britain, opening up new ways of thinking about the
development of women's higher education. Dr Laura Schwartz is a Fellow
in History at St Hugh's College, Oxford. She has written on many aspects
of the history of feminism in modern Britain.
