The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live PDF Author: Danielle Dreilinger
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live

The Secret History of Home Economics: How Trailblazing Women Harnessed the Power of Home and Changed the Way We Live PDF Author: Danielle Dreilinger
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004509
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

The Secret History of Home Economics

The Secret History of Home Economics PDF Author: Danielle Dreilinger
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1324021861
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An NPR Favorite History Book of 2021 The surprising, often fiercely feminist, always fascinating, yet barely known, history of home economics. The term “home economics” may conjure traumatic memories of lopsided hand-sewn pillows or sunken muffins. But common conception obscures the story of the revolutionary science of better living. The field exploded opportunities for women in the twentieth century by reducing domestic work and providing jobs as professors, engineers, chemists, and businesspeople. And it has something to teach us today. In the surprising, often fiercely feminist and always fascinating The Secret History of Home Economics, Danielle Dreilinger traces the field’s history from Black colleges to Eleanor Roosevelt to Okinawa, from a Betty Crocker brigade to DIY techies. These women—and they were mostly women—became chemists and marketers, studied nutrition, health, and exercise, tested parachutes, created astronaut food, and took bold steps in childhood development and education. Home economics followed the currents of American culture even as it shaped them. Dreilinger brings forward the racism within the movement along with the strides taken by women of color who were influential leaders and innovators. She also looks at the personal lives of home economics’ women, as they chose to be single, share lives with other women, or try for egalitarian marriages. This groundbreaking and engaging history restores a denigrated subject to its rightful importance, as it reminds us that everyone should learn how to cook a meal, balance their account, and fight for a better world.

Rethinking Home Economics

Rethinking Home Economics PDF Author: Sarah Stage
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501729942
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Until recently, historians tended to dismiss home economics as little more than a conspiracy to keep women in the kitchen. This landmark volume initiates collaboration among home economists, family and consumer science professionals, and women's historians. What knits the essays together is a willingness to revisit the subject of home economics with neither indictment nor apology. The volume includes significant new work that places home economics in the twentieth century within the context of the development of women's professions. Rethinking Home Economics documents the evolution of a profession from the home economics movement launched by Ellen Richards in the early twentieth century to the modern field renamed Family and Consumer Sciences in 1994. The essays in this volume show the range of activities pursued under the rubric of home economics, from dietetics and parenting, teaching and cooperative extension work, to test kitchen and product development. Exploration of the ways in which gender, race, and class influenced women's options in colleges and universities, hospitals, business, and industry, as well as government has provided a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they used to gain legitimacy as the field developed.

Home Economics

Home Economics PDF Author: Jennifer Mcknight Trontz
Publisher: Quirk Books
ISBN: 1594747504
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Revisit the home-economics textbooks of yore to get the best vintage advice on shopping, cooking, decorating, and budgeting your way to a happy, healthy household “Housekeeping is becoming more and more a matter of science, and the laurels are bound to fall to the woman who conducts her household in a business-like way.” Let the thrifty sensibility of yesteryear be your guide as you shop for the most economical foods, choose wall colors scientifically, clean with natural products, look your best without breaking the bank, and budget your way to frugal efficiency. In this amazing collection of clever wisdom and practical advice drawn from vintage home-economics textbooks, you’ll find everything you need to get back to basics and run a healthy and happy household. Home Economics covers all the categories of delightful domesticity: • Health & Hygiene • Cookery & Recipes • Manners & Etiquette • Design & Decoration • Cleaning & Safety • Gardening & Crafts Rediscover the art and science of keeping house—economically!

Stir it Up

Stir it Up PDF Author: Megan J. Elias
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812240795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Stir It Up explores the changing aims of home economics while putting the phenomena of Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray, Ty Pennington, and the "Mommy Wars" into historical context.

Finding Betty Crocker

Finding Betty Crocker PDF Author: Susan Marks
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439104018
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
IN 1945, FORTUNE MAGAZINE named Betty Crocker the second most popular American woman, right behind Eleanor Roosevelt, and dubbed Betty America's First Lady of Food. Not bad for a gal who never actually existed. "Born" in 1921 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to proud corporate parents, Betty Crocker has grown, over eight decades, into one of the most successful branding campaigns the world has ever known. Now, at long last, she has her own biography. Finding Betty Crocker draws on six years of research plus an unprecedented look into the General Mills archives to reveal how a fictitious spokesperson was enthusiastically welcomed into kitchens and shopping carts across the nation. The Washburn Crosby Company (one of the forerunners to General Mills) chose the cheery all-American "Betty" as a first name and paired it with Crocker, after William Crocker, a well-loved company director. Betty was to be the newest member of the Home Service Department, where she would be a "friend" to consumers in search of advice on baking -- and, in an unexpected twist, their personal lives. Soon Betty Crocker had her own national radio show, which, during the Great Depression and World War II, broadcast money-saving recipes, rationing tips, and messages of hope. Over 700,000 women joined Betty's wartime Home Legion program, while more than one million women -- and men -- registered for the Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air during its twenty-seven-year run. At the height of Betty Crocker's popularity in the 1940s, she received as many as four to five thousand letters daily, care of General Mills. When her first full-scale cookbook, Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, or "Big Red," as it is affectionately known, was released in 1950, first-year sales rivaled those of the Bible. Today, over two hundred products bear her name, along with thousands of recipe booklets and cookbooks, an interactive website, and a newspaper column. What is it about Betty? In answering the question of why everyone was buying what she was selling, author Susan Marks offers an entertaining, charming, and utterly unique look -- through words and images -- at an American icon situated between profound symbolism and classic kitchen kitsch.

Women of the Harvest

Women of the Harvest PDF Author: Holly Bollinger
Publisher: Voyageur Press
ISBN: 9780760321843
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Up with the rooster, to bed with the sun, and if the farmers a woman, its a good bet theres always more work waiting. Holding household and family together, women farmers daily, quietly perform heroic labors just to eke a livelihood out of the land. Women have always farmed, when death or war left them to fend for themselves, but today they might choose to farm, and, in a time when farming is a shrinking occupation, their choices have expanded. Some women are only at home on the range; others, more hearth-bound, see the farm as an extension of home and family life. Some farm to feed their families; others, running huge corporate operations, farm to feed nations. These are the farmers that Women of the Harvest celebrates. In twelve illustrated profiles, the book introduces readers to women who work the land, raising livestock and crops, and, in doing so, uphold and transform a tradition as old as agriculture itself. Their stories, drawn from farms across the country, are truly in the American grain.

African Americans in the Human Sciences

African Americans in the Human Sciences PDF Author: Vanessa P. Jackson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793648956
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
This book explores the role and experience of African American women scholars and educators in the field of human, family, and consumer sciences. Its five sections cover careers in education, the role of historically Black colleges and universities, opportunities and challenges brought about by the internationalization of the field, opportunities for new careers paths in the human sciences, and the current and future role of technology. The contributors come from a variety of backgrounds with experiences in research, teaching, outreach, and service. Taken together, the essays capture the vitality and diversity of knowledge that has, over time, assisted in transforming the field.

The Useful Book

The Useful Book PDF Author: David Bowers
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 0761171738
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A modern and energetically designed encyclopedia of DIY with everything you need to know to roll up your sleeves and cook it, build it, sew it, clean it, or repair it yourself. In other words, everything you would have learned from your shop and home ec teachers, if you'd had them. The Useful Book features 138 practical projects and how-tos, with step-by-step instructions and illustrations, relevant charts, sidebars, lists, and handy toolboxes. There’s a kitchen crash course, including the must-haves for a well-stocked pantry; how to boil an egg (and peel it frustration-free); how to grill, steam, sauté, and roast vegetables. There’s Sewing 101, plus how to fold a fitted sheet, tie a tie, mop a floor, make a bed, and set the table for a formal dinner. Next up: a 21st-century shop class. The tools that everyone should have, and dozens of cool projects that teach fundamental techniques. Practice measuring, cutting, and nailing by building a birdhouse. Make a bookshelf or a riveted metal picture frame. Plus: do-it-yourself plumbing; car repair basics; and home maintenance, from priming and painting to refinishing wood floors.

Perfection Salad

Perfection Salad PDF Author: Laura Shapiro
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520257382
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This social history tells the story of America's transformation from a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for instant mashed potatoes. The author investigates a women reformers at the turn of the twentieth century--including Fannie Farmer of the Boston Cooking School--who were determined to modernize the American diet through a "scientific" approach to cooking. It reveals why we think the way we do about food today.--Publisher's description.