Scott, Anne Firor “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminar, 1822-1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (1979), 3-25.

Summary
This article examines the Troy Female Seminary, which was the first institution to offer American women a curriculum similar to that of contemporary men’s college. While its stated aim was to educate women for responsible motherhood and train them to be teachers, it was more than that, Anne Scott contends, it 'became a source of feminism and the incubator of a new style of female personality'. The proliferation of these institutions influenced and spread feminism during the 19th century. Scott counters previous scholarship that has largely treated these institutions as “bulwarks of tradition” and thus has looked to reform movements and voluntary associations as the seed-beds of feminism. “Higher education for women,” Scott argues, “as it began to develop at Troy and spread thereafter, played an important part in the diffusion of feminist values.” While couched in a discourse of women’s “traditional role,” these institutions exposed women to new and empowering ideas and spread feminist ideas geographical as well as in each succeeding generation.

See Also: Mary Kelley