Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

In this ambitious book, Kenneth Wheeler revises our understanding of the nineteenth-century American Midwest by reconsidering an institution that was pivotal in its making—the small college. During the antebellum decades, Americans built a remarkable number of colleges in the Midwest that would help cultivate their regional identity. Through higher education, the values of people living north and west of the Ohio River formed the basis of a new Midwestern culture. Cultivating Regionalism shows how college founders built robust institutions of higher learning in this socially and ethnically diverse milieu. Contrary to conventional wisdom, these colleges were much different than their counterparts in the East and South—not derivative of them as many historians suggest. Manual labor programs, for instance, nurtured a Midwestern zeal for connecting mind and body. And the coeducation of men and women at these schools exploded gender norms throughout the region. Students emerging from these colleges would ultimately shape the ethos of the Progressive era and in large numbers take up scientific investigation as an expression of their egalitarian, production-oriented training. More than a history of these antebellum schools, this elegantly conceived work exposes the interplay in regionalism between thought and action—who antebellum Midwesterners imagined they were and how they built their colleges in distinct ways.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.

The second woman to earn a PhD from Columbia University—and the first from south of the Mason-Dixon Line to do so—Kentucky native Katherine Jackson French broke boundaries. Her research kick-started a resurgence of Appalachian music that continues to this day, but French's collection of traditional Kentucky ballads, which should have been her crowning scholarly achievement, never saw print. Academic rivalries, gender prejudice, and broken promises set against a thirty-year feud known as the Ballad Wars denied French her place in history and left the field to northerner Olive Dame Campbell and English folklorist Cecil Sharp, setting Appalachian studies on a foundation marred by stereotypes and misconceptions. Katherine Jackson French: Kentucky's Forgotten Ballad Collector tells the story of what might have been. Drawing on never-before-seen artifacts from French's granddaughter, Elizabeth DiSavino reclaims the life and legacy of this pivotal scholar by emphasizing the ways her work shaped and could reshape our conceptions about Appalachia. In contrast to the collection published by Campbell and Sharp, French's ballads elevate the status of women, give testimony to the complexity of balladry's ethnic roots and influences, and reveal more complex local dialects. Had French published her work in 1910, stereotypes about Appalachian ignorance, misogyny, and homogeneity may have diminished long ago. Included in this book is the first-ever publication of Katherine Jackson French's English-Scottish Ballads from the Hills of Kentucky.

Sager Brown, as an orphanage and school in the bayou country of Louisiana, served the intellectual and social developmental interests of black children for over a century when few if any other avenues were available. Their story is one of compassion and heartfelt dedication of key individuals who, with help, countered the destructive force of oppression of post-emancipation and segregation, resulting in thousands of redeemed lives. A brief history of the Bayou Teche area is offered to pinpoint the site of the school, which exists today as the major shipping depot of the United Methodist Committee on Relief for relief supplies both nationally and worldwide. Divine intervention is in evidence throughout the book as the institution ebbs and flows from one crisis to the next, always raising its head to move forward from apparently insurmountable odds to the new light of day. Although Sager Brown is and has always been a Methodist church-supported institution, anyone interested in the plight of children and their eventual redemption will find the book a worthwhile read. It was a joy to document the only in-depth history of this historic institution.

Examining the evolution of US institutions of learning, from one-room schools to vast campuses, this text seeks to remind readers of this heritage through an examination of the philosophies behind the architectural styles of Ohio's schools and colleges, libraries and opera houses.