Judith E.

Smith American Studies University of Massachusetts Boston

http://www.umb.edu/academics/cla/faculty/judith_smith 1. "Would you consider commenting on the era in which Dorothea Dix made reforms. Would you agree the early 1800s simultaneous reforms in education, temperance, slavery, and civil rights movements aside the asylum movement may have influenced Dorothea Dix's ability to lobby within the state legislation system? " I would NOT agree to that statement without much more careful consideration of the timing of those campaigns and the language of those campaigns in relationship to Dix's time line and the language of her campaign. From looking briefly at online biographical information, I would also look at the influence of Quakers and Quaker thinking. I think that what might really be helpful for you is for you to make up a timeline of these particular movements. You can see what is happening when, and whether or not they are trying to lobby within the state legislative system or not, and you can see the chronology, what might be influencing what else. You need to know more about the political system at the time, the political parties, and what kinds of political strategies were possible, given that only men had the vote, and that the franchise had just recently expanded to including non-property-owning men after 1828.Men of wealth and property were still very influential in state legislatures. The reform tactics of temperance, for example, varied between confessionals about the costs of drinking and campaigns attached to a particular political formation, the Whigs, to use institutions to create social changes they desired, especially to coerce what they saw as appropriate middle class behavior in public. Anti-slavery advocates also adopted a

wide range of tactics, but in the 1830s, public lecturing , petition campaigns, and sending out anti-slavery publications and materials were more important than political strategies. I don't know what you are referring to as "civil rights movements" in the period before the Civil War. Do you mean, efforts by free blacks to stop efforts to disenfranchise them? I think the closest movement most relevant might be the movement to establish public schools,; the arguments there are similar to those of creating the asylum that Rothman talks about, but you need to see what those arguments ARE to see if they are going in a similar direction. David Tyack and Larry Cuban have a book on the history school reform TINKERING TOWARDS UTOPIA, that might be helpful. 2. "Within the context of Women's History, how significant do you see Dix's work? How significant is her responsibility she adopted for the mentally ill?" College classes in women's history try to focus on the changing historical circumstances of women's lives, changing historical understandings of the economic, social and political roles of women and men, what are the sources of new conceptualizations of women as citizens and new arguments for women's rights. Women's activism in the causes of temperance and anti-slavery contribute to their formulation of women's rights in 1848 at seneca falls. They don't focus so much on individual women or individual reformers. Dix is known as a woman reformer for her work in the areas you mention, but a college women's history class would focus on context, on the larger debates on women's roles in nursing and wine's leadership with the US Sanitary Commission during the Civil War, less on individuals and personal motivations. I have never used any material on Dix in the women's history courses I have taught, but I have only taught a one semester course, and someone teaching two semesters of a women's history survey might have more time.