Pam Hirsch
Position/Status
University Lecturer
Graduate Tutor at Newnham College
E-mail Address: ph211@cam.ac.uk
Phone: 01223 507294
Qualifications
CertEd, BA Hons, MA, PhD
Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations
Society of Biographers
Society for the Promotion of Training for Women
The Women's Library
Profile
I am interested in re-writing the history of education (especially, although not exclusively, that of women's education), using new theories of gender. I have explored the way in which leaders of the women's movement saw the improved education of girls and women as the first and necessary step towards citizenship and suffrage.
My work has included a feminist re-vision of standard histories of education (where women were largely viewed as the followers of great men). My work, by contrast, has considered women in their roles as leaders, ideologues, founders of educational institutions and educational policy-makers. I have, for example, re-appraised Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation as an advocate of 'rational education', including a critique of the political frameworks that have distorted earlier appraisals of her educational philosophy. I have written more generally on the contribution of women's brainpower to the wealth of the nation, including Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress 1790 -1930, co-edited with Mary Hilton .
I have written a critically acclaimed biography of Barbara Bodichon, which includes her role as an educationist, both in setting up a progressive primary school in the mid-nineteenth century and co-founding Girton College, Cambridge, the first university college for women in England.
Teacher Training at Cambridge: The Initiatives of Oscar Browning and Elizabeth Hughes co-written with New York scholar, Mark McBeth is, in effect the history of the Faculty of Education in the University of Cambridge. The struggles of these two characters to professionalize schoolteaching point to the polemics of the teaching profession in our own century
Academic Area/Links
I supervise for the MPhil in Screen Media Cultures, University of Cambridge
I supervise History of Education PhD students, and act as Internal Examiner
I supervise Gender Studies for SPS
I supervise MPhils students for the History Faculty
I supervise PhDs for the English Faculty, and act as Internal Examiner of PhDs and MPhils
PhD supervisor for Sociology Department, University of Gloucester
External examiner for Anglia Ruskin University
Research Topics
On Individuals: George Eliot; Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon; Charlotte Bronte; Mary Wollstonecraft; Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Hertha Marks Ayrton, a woman scientist; Margaret Morris, an avant-garde dancer in twentieth-century; George Sand, the nineteenth century French writer; Phyllis Bottome, Elizabeth Hughes.
Female Romanticism in nineteenth-century women writers.
Writing (scholarly) biography.
Autobiographics.
Women travel writers (e.g. Barbara Bodichon and Mathilda Betham-Edwards).
Women and Literary Bohemianism.
Pre-Raphaelite Women Painters.
Sibling relationships in literature (especially but not exclusively nineteenth century).
History of the (19th century) women's movement.
History of women's involvement in education (both as theorists and as practitioners), especially in the campaigns to get university education for women.
Political leadership by women in the nineteenth century context.
Nineteenth century periodicals run by women, and written in by women.
Current Research Projects
I am currently researching and writing a book on Phyllis Bottome, writer, political activist and educationist
Course Involvement
I lecture on nineteenth-century and twentieth century in English Literature including International Literature in English
I am the Course Director of the Film, Identity and Culture Course
I lecture on women educationists as part of the History of Education team.
Publications
Book chapters:
'Mary Wollstonecraft: a problematic legacy?' in Wollstonecraft's Daughters, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester University Press, 1996)
'Gender Negotiations in Nineteenth Century Women's Writing' in Uses of Autobiography, ed. Julia Swindells (Taylor & Francis, Gender Change and Society series, 1995)
'Barbara Bodichon: artist and activist' in Women in the Victorian Art World, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr (Manchester University Press, 1995
Books:
Teacher Training in Cambridge: The Initiatives of Oscar Browning and Elizabeth Hughes with Mark McBeth (Woburn, 2004)
Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress 1790-1930, co-editor with Mary Hilton (Longman's, 2000)
Barbara Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel (Chatto & Windus, 1998) and paperback version (Pimlico, 1999)