Book Review: Transforming Women’s Education: Liberal Arts and Music in Female Seminaries, by Jewel E. Smith

Abstract

House. Smith’s biography notes her musical study in Germany and an account of the publication of her music books for children, including The Eleanor Smith Music Course published in 1908 by the American Book Company. Schultz examines the “cultural pedagogy” of Hull House in chapter 5. As educators and cultural leaders, the women of Hull House used the arts programs to save children from the adjacent community, especially immigrant children, from what they considered to be a destructive, commercial culture. This pedagogical perspective later extended farther into the community as programs for adults grew out of the arts and crafts movement in Chicago. Out of this came a newly created Labor Museum at Hull House with adults in the community teaching “textiles, metals, woods, grains, and printing and binding” (p. 196) and, later, pottery. Chapter 6 draws a parallel between Progressive Era political and social issues to current political culture. Schultz further examines the larger Progressive Era movement and the consequent changes to the settlement house’s objectives after Jane Addams’s death in 1935, especially the influence of new political and social programs, “The New Deal” of the time. The final chapter is a critique of Jane Addams’s exclusion of blacks in Hull House programs, claiming that there was a small population of blacks in the neighborhood, even though they were conspicuously absent from the musical and artistic programs of the organization. Schultz states that “in the absence of art, music, craft display, or drama that provided positive images of African Americans, immigrants learned to identify with whites rather than with people of color” (p. 280). While portions of the book can be difficult to absorb, both in prose and content, the authors provide a comprehensive documentation of the arts programs at Hull House. The book also contains an Afterword with “A Singer’s Perspective” on Hull House Songs by soprano Jocelyn Zelasko and Harriet Monroe’s libretto for The Troll’s Holiday, the operetta for children composed by Eleanor Smith. Readers who want to explore the life and work of Eleanor Smith and her role in the music education of children will encounter well-sourced information on this overlooked composer and educator. The book goes beyond the composer and her songs, however. The authors delve into Jane Addams’s philosophical, and by extension, political beliefs. The Hull House organization itself emerges as the larger focus through detailed narrative and critique. Eleanor Smith’s “Hull House Songs” is an insightful look into how the advocates of historical Progressivism mixed high, aspirational art with working-class, democratic principles.