Schoolhouse Rock! 400 Years of Race, Gender, and Class in Boston Area Educational Institutions

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

This symposium examines five school sites in the Boston area spanning nearly 400 years of active use: Boston Latin School (1635), Harvard College (1636), The African School on Nantucket (1827), The Abiel Smith School (1835), and The Dorchester Industrial School for Girls (1859). These regulated educational institutions provide ideal opportunities to study issues of race, class, gender, identity, and agency through the lens of a community’s youth. This session combines recent analysis of newly excavated sites as well as re-analysis of sites that were excavated decades ago. Archaeology provides valuable insight into the lives of children who often are deliberetely absent from the historic record. Additionally, presenters will explore the intersectionality of these individual institutions as they overlap in time, educational goals, and the communities they served.

Other Keywords
school • Education • boston • Toys • Medicine • Zooarchaeology • Diet • Ethnicity • Privy • Race

Temporal Keywords
19th Century • Nineteenth Century • Late 19th Century • 17th Century • 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries • 1635-1810

Geographic Keywords
North America • Coahuila (State / Territory) • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • United States of America (Country) • Chihuahua (State / Territory) • Nuevo Leon (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  1. 19th Century Reform and Control at the Industrial School for Girls in Dorchester, Massachusetts (2018)
  2. Archaeology of the 1859 Dorchester Industrial School for Girls: an Introduction (2018)
  3. Boston Latin School: A Look At Ethnic And Engendered Spaces (2018)
  4. Building a College in Colonial America: evidence from Harvard Yard, Cambridge, MA. (2018)
  5. Education as Resistance: The African School and New Guinea Community on Nantucket (2018)
  6. Long Walks and Longer Waits: Educational Injustice in Boston Schools (2018)
  7. O is for Opium: Offering More than Education at the Abiel Smith School (2018)
  8. Provisions, Possessions, and Positionality: Faunal Analysis of the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls (2018)
  9. "Some interest has been expressed in regard to the diet of the children": The Documentary and Archaeological Implications of Food at the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls. (2018)
  10. "Training to good conduct, and instructing in household labor:" Sewing at the Industrial School for Girls, Dorchester, MA (2018)
  11. ‘The True Spirit of Service’: Toys as Tools of Ideology at the Dorchester Industrial School for Girls (2018)
  12. Up Close and Personal: Objects as Expressions of Identity at the Abiel Smith School (2018)