Date Thesis Awarded

4-2011

Access Type

Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only

Degree Name

Bachelors of Arts (BA)

Department

Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies

Advisor

Jennifer Putzi

Committee Members

Charles McGovern

Nancy Gray

Abstract

This thesis is about academics as a means of reifying and challenging marital expectations with in a context of concern about changes in marriage perceived to alter social structures. Marriage, both in its practicalities and social consequences, must be learned, and that education has historically occurred in part on college campuses. By recording and analyzing marriage education in the post-war period, including that of the The College of William and Mary, this research establishes that a major impetus for the development of marriage education was social concerns regarding changing gender roles and the purpose of academia in establishing social order. My thesis also includes an engaged scholarship component, "The Marriage Class," which was a five week one-credit course taught by Professor Putzi and based on my honors research. The course served to expand upon and complicate understanding's of academia's role in marriage education by both exemplifying and intentionally interrogating its role.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Comments

Thesis is part of Honors ETD pilot project, 2008-2013. Migrated from Dspace in 2016.

Download

Share Feedback

On-Campus Access Only

Share

COinS