Women's History in House Museums: How Using Local Nursing Archives Can Improve Their Histories

Time: 12:00-1:30 p.m.

Place: Claire Fagin Hall, Room 435

Abstract: This seminar examines the possibilities of expanding house museum histories via local archives. Nursing history has the unique opportunity to explore women’s history, local servants’ history, changes in caretaking, and larger national trends within a single space. This seminar focuses on the changes in caretaking within a particular Germantown upper class home and then relates it to the late nineteenth century development of training programs for nurses and hiring professionally trained women. The professionalization of nurses influenced upper class women's lifestyle and mothering duties within a single generation. The seminar suggests that through exploration of locally housed nursing archives, different histories, including servant, nursing and women histories, can be told at museums.