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Copyright by Rebecca Stiles Onion 2012 Copyright by Rebecca Stiles Onion 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Rebecca Stiles Onion certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Science and the Culture of American Childhood, 1900-1980 Committee: ___________________________ Janet Davis, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Julia Mickenberg, Co-Supervisor ___________________________ Jeffrey Meikle ___________________________ Bruce Hunt ___________________________ John Hartigan Science and the Culture of American Childhood, 1900-1980 by Rebecca Stiles Onion, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2012 Dedicated to Nick, my favorite tinkerer, who always wants to know why Acknowledgements First things first: I must thank my co-supervisors, Julia Mickenberg and Janet Davis, who have been friends as well as mentors. Janet and Julia have always been ready with advice, reading recommendations, and productively challenging feedback. I’ve tried to repay them for their generosity in jam and preserves, holiday fudge, and links to funny websites, but I don’t think the debt will ever be settled. The rest of my excellent committee, Jeffrey Meikle, Bruce Hunt, and John Hartigan, offered valuable perspective from their corners of the scholarly world, as well as some grounding for my wild flights of fancy. For graduate students, financial support really means the gift of time: time to research, time in an archive, time to think. I must thank a number of organizations and individuals for providing me with this precious gift. The Donald D. Harrington Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin supported my first year in graduate school and allowed me entry into a warm group of past and present Harrington fellows. The University of Texas at Austin’s William S. Livingston Graduate Fellowship allowed me the freedom to travel for research during a crucial year of project development. Grants from the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Liberal Arts and Department of American Studies, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Children’s Literature Association, the Friends of the Princeton University Library, and the Robert A. Heinlein Online Archives all provided short-term funding for research trips. Friends Mary and Doc Hopkins, Mira Manickam, Julia Turner and Ben Wasserstein, Audrey Federman and v James Joughin, Elanor Starmer and Kumar Chandran, and Rebecca and Jake Maine allowed me to shelter with them on my various archives jaunts. During my final semester of graduate school, I began a postdoctoral fellowship at the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, made possible because Babak Ashrafi took it on faith that I’d finish up soon; I appreciate his confidence and support. Archivists and librarians found materials for me, showed me their treasures, and supported me with their enthusiasm and ideas. Among those I must thank: at the Smithsonian, Pamela Hansen, Peggy Kidwell, and Marcel LaFollette; at the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton, Andrea Immel and Aaron Pickett; at the Strong National Museum of Play, Lauren Soldano; at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, Rosie Cook; at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Allison Galland; and at the American Museum of Natural History, Barbara Mathe and Gregory Raml. At conferences, on Twitter, and over email, the following scholars shared ideas, references, and drafts: Jill Anderson, Alice Bell, Robin Bernstein, Sarah Bridger, Victoria Cain, Sarah Anne Carter, Natalia Cecire, Miriam Forman-Brunell, Adam Golub, Bert Hansen, Cindi Katz, Shane Landrum, Al Martinez, Rebecca Miller, Philip Nel, Alex Olson, Nathalie Op de Beeck, Leslie Paris, Anna Redcay, William Turkel, Shirley Wajda, and Virginia Zimmerman. The editors and anonymous reviewers of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth provided feedback that significantly improved the dissertation’s first chapter. Audiences at meetings of the American Studies Association, the Children’s Literature Association, and the Exploring Childhood Studies Conference vi at Rutgers-Camden heard portions of various chapters and asked good questions. I must thank the University of Texas at Austin’s History of Science Colloquium and the Penn Workshop Series in History and Sociology of Science, Medicine, and Technology for offering astute commentary on various portions of the dissertation in its final phases. In graduate school, several reading and writing groups provided essential space to discuss, kvetch, and process. At various times, I exchanged drafts, mulled over ideas, or moaned over the number of orals books yet to be crossed off lists with Gavin Benke, Becky D’Orsogna, Andi Gustavson, Josh Holland, Katie Kelly, Stephanie Kolberg, and Anne Helen Petersen. Janet Davis’ Dissertators group provided another outlet for much- needed perspective and critique. My personal obligations are many. I thank my extended family of benevolent Harris-Dolben-Swiggett aunts, uncles, and cousins—in particular, Don and Martha Dolben, who supported me materially and emotionally through this endeavor, and my grandmother Barbara Harris, whose affection for history I clearly inherited. I thank my sweet in-laws, Gloria and Reese Muntean. (Jim Muntean, we miss you every day.) And what of my friend-family, scattered as we are across the globe? Without them, my life would be much sadder. Thank you, my Milton Academy O.G.s Sarah Bennett, Cristie Ellis, Elanor Starmer, and Julia Turner, and my NYC pod, Sarah Bridger, Sarah Coombs, Mira Edmonds, Audrey Federman, Marisa Giorgi, Michael Kavanagh, Mira Manickam, Raj Nath, Andy Pratt, and Mark Zumwalt. In Austin, my graduate school experience was greatly enhanced by friends in my cohort and the Veritable vii Blunderbusses of the cohort below us. People told me grad school would be lonely; lucky for me, I had Marsha Abrahams, Marvin Bendele, Gavin Benke, Eric Covey, Dave Croke, Rebecca D’Orsogna, Irene Garza, Andi Gustavson, Josh Holland, Andy Jones, Katie and Kevin Kelly, Stephanie Kolberg, Jess Mitchell, Peter Mongillo, Anne Helen Petersen, and Charlotte Nunes in my corner. And, of course, my beloved immediate family: brother Josh and his partner Greta Mahowald, whose Alaskan perspective gets me thinking about food, shelter, plumbing, and animals when I’ve been wandering too long in the scholarly weeds. My wise sister Sarah Onion Alford, her partner Jody Alford, and my lively and magical nieces, Wilhelmina and Josephine: I kiss you from afar. And my parents, Anne and Perry, who fed me books from the start, hugged me often, and made sure we always had family dinner. I love you. I love you! Finally, and most importantly, my Nick. After they made you, they broke the mold. viii Science and the Culture of American Childhood, 1900-1980 Rebecca Stiles Onion, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisors: Janet Davis and Julia Mickenberg In American culture of the twentieth century, there has evolved a persistent popular association between the personal qualities of children and of scientists. Efforts to encourage children to get “hooked on science” have consistently noted this affinity, as Americans have ascribed curiosity, wonder, and delight in discovery to their children. Responding to debates within cultural history, childhood studies, and the history of science, this dissertation argues that tracking the ways that this cultural commonplace has been created, and showing how it has depended upon inequalities of gender, race, and class, can help us understand intermingled attitudes of awe and distrust toward science in public culture. In five chapters, the dissertation traces efforts to bring science into children’s popular culture across the twentieth century, showing how these efforts constitute a very visible form of public science. In Chapter One, located in the Progressive Era, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Children’s Museum offer comparative case studies that show how “science” was perceived as a civilizing or empowering force in children’s lives, depending on their social class. In the interwar period, children’s culture taught that posing questions about the natural and technological worlds was a practice that cemented a white male child’s position as the vanguard of evolution. Chapter Two examines the proliferation of children’s non-fiction ix and encyclopedias, and Chapter Three shows how chemistry sets created images of modern boyhood. In the postwar era, young scientists began to appear as an endangered species, as science promoters saw popular culture as a threat to the kind of individuality and focus necessary for serious inquiry. Chapters Four and Five show how promoters of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and Robert Heinlein, author of a series of young-adult science fiction novels, sought to create alternative youth cultures hospitable to science. By examining the images of young inquirers that result from these popularization efforts, I argue that these images helped adults come to terms with their own relationships to innovation, while naturalizing the perception of science as an intellectual project of privilege. x Table of Contents Introduction: A Curious Century: Children’s Science as Public Science…………………1 Chapter 1: Varieties of Museum Experiences: The American Museum of Natural History, The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, and Progressive Productions of Wonder…………………………………………………………………..……….29
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