Text

ETD_2605

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.000052979

theses

This dissertation proposes three interwoven arguments concerning Gertrude Stein’s undergraduate education at Radcliffe College in the late 19th century. First, that Stein’s Sophomore writing course in 1894-1895 – English 22, Daily Themes – played a larger role
in the course of her writing life than has been understood in the fields of Modernism and
American literature. Second, that the first women of Radcliffe College, and before Radcliffe’s founding, of the Harvard Annex, were more integral to late 19th century growth in English and Composition at Harvard College than has been understood in the fields of
Rhetoric and Composition. Finally, that we cannot understand the expansion of Harvard College to Harvard University, the implementation of the elective system, or the founding of Radcliffe without integrating the various roles of Special Students – of which Gertrude Stein was one – in the broadening mission of the Cambridge institution. Following these threads, and focusing on Stein as an emblematic – though
idiosyncratic – student, I provide a history of Harvard-Radcliffe during the 1870s-1890s, a period of unprecedented change, the decades before and during Stein’s attendance from 1893-1898. I examine the role of female students in the origins of English Composition, a history which has previously focused heavily on male education as it emanated from Harvard and reverberated throughout higher education into the 20th century. I focus on Stein as a student of the pedagogy of Daily Themes practiced by Barrett Wendell. In providing these institutional, historical, and pedagogical contexts, I aim to connect Stein,
the student writer, to the adult innovator, to form a trajectory from her English 22 course into her adult writing life. My goal is for us to understand “The Making of Gertrude Stein” as a consequence, in part, of her reading and writing at Radcliffe. This is an educational
history of one of America’s great modernist writers embedded in the institutional history of her alma mater.
In order to help further research on Gertrude Stein’s undergraduate writing, my dissertation includes in its appendices the digitized images of Stein’s Daily Themes for English 22 at Radcliffe and my annotated transcription of the Themes including professorial comments.

Ph.D.

Includes abstract

Vita

Includes bibliographical references

by Michelle J. Brazier

doi:10.7282/T37S7NVX

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.

ETD

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