Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Beck-Kaplan, Colleen
URN	etd-04192010-105915
Title	Family of Science: Education, Gender, and Science in the Colden Family of New York, 1720-1770
Degree	Master of Arts
Department	History, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Edward Gray Committee Chair Frederick Davis Committee Member Jennifer Koslow Committee Member
Keywords	Gender Botany Jane Colden Cadwallader Colden
Date of Defense	2010-03-26
Availability	unrestricted
Abstract Investigation into how the Jane and Cadwallader Colden navigated the physical, social, and cultural environment of colonial New York both as regular people representative of their class, and as scientists offers insight into the changing nature of colonial society and views of science in the mid 1700s. The work of the Coldens is especially important to this topic because it shows the influence of Enlightenment thought in creating “proper” fields of science and intellectual activity in the English colonies on in the mid to late 18th century when this “feminization” of certain sciences is often seen as primarily an English phenomenon of the 19th century. Instead, their work shows that this was a trans-Atlantic change with earlier origins. As elite women participated in the sciences with greater frequency, multiple narratives emerged in both England and the American colonies, to justify this change and place it in an understandable context. For men, society accepted participation in sciences as a manifestation of Enlightenment values focused on reason. Women‟s participation in the sciences, on the other hand, was often justified through an appeal to natural philosophy or through emphasis on continuity with established beliefs about manners and hetero-gender social interaction that generally mandated familial support for their endeavors. By examining the writings of the Colden family and commentary on changes to intellectual culture that emerged in popular pamphlets and behavior manuals we can see that the groundwork for the „feminization‟ of certain intellectual subjects such as botany was already in place in the 18th century and examine some of the cultural forces that led to this trend which would continue into the 19th century.
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