Mary Lyon, the Founding of Mount Holyoke College, and the Cultural Revival of Jonathan Edwards

Bibliographic Data

ID4517628
AuthorsJoseph Conforti (corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume3
Issue1
Pages69-89
Publication date1993-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1052-1151 • E-ISSN: 1533-8568
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1525/rac.1993.3.1.03a00040
OpenAlexW4243207326
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited24

Recent studies of the Second Great Awakening have stressed the strong appeal of evangelical religion to female worshippers. The revival has been portrayed as a "women's awakening" that nurtured "bonds of womanhood," promoted female benevolence, and shaped antebellum canons of domesticity. Mary Lyon (1797-1849) and the founding of Mount Holyoke Seminary, which opened in 1837, have not gone unnoticed by historians of a women's awakening. In a follow-up essay to her important study of Catherine Beecher, for example, Kathryn Kish Sklar established the educational significance of Mount Holyoke and situated Lyon's efforts in the context of the Second Great Awakening. Mount Holyoke's innovations included secure financial support funded by the evangelical community at large; a resultant low cost that enabled students from modest and even poor backgrounds to enroll; and an intellectually rigorous curriculum that eschewed "ornamentations" such as dancing and the cultivation of gentility

Appeal · Archaeology · Mount · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Engineering · History · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious studies

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