Forgotten Trailblazers: A Historical Case Study of African American Women's Study Abroad in Europe, 1859-1935.

我的研究项目旨在批判性地分析和提供对19世纪和20世纪初非洲裔美国女性先驱在欧洲的留学经历、成就和遗产的新见解。今天，他们在欧洲精英院校取得的开创性教育成就在美国研究文献中仍然被忽视。我展示了他们如何利用自己的主动性和能动性，作为前奴隶和自由女性，从19世纪中期开始在欧洲留学。尽管面临奴隶制、反识字法、种族、性别和科学知识低下的教条的障碍，这些妇女敢于挑战她们所在时代和地点限制黑人妇女接受高等教育的普遍态度。本文重点研究了四个案例。他们是：废奴主义者和医生莎拉·帕克·雷蒙德(1824-1876)，国际民权活动家和俱乐部女会员玛丽·丘奇·特雷尔(1863-1954)，教育家、作家、活动家和女权主义先驱安娜·朱莉娅·库珀(1858-1964)，以及外交和裁军专家默茨·泰特(1905-1996)。这些妇女值得研究和认可，不仅是因为她们对争取种族正义的斗争作出了贡献，而且还因为她们决心在国外接受高等教育。她们大胆地抵制白人父权在出生时就分配给她们的种族和性别角色，并驱散了黑人女性智力低下的神话。在这项跨学科的研究中，我调查了这四位女性是如何就种族、性别和阶级问题进行谈判的，以及她们在国外的学习经历如何影响了她们的生活、职业和作为跨国活动家的角色。我使用历史案例研究来分析这些经历，以及它们的遗产如何赋予在国外学习中代表性不足的当代黑人女性权力。我的研究借鉴了档案、回忆录、自传、历史报纸和个人文件，为新知识创造了一个空间，有助于在海外学习的背景下更丰富地理解黑人女性抵抗运动

My research project aims to critically analyze and provide new insight into the European study abroad experiences, accomplishments, and legacies of pioneering African American women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, their trailblazing educational achievements at elite European institutions remain overlooked in American Studies literature. I show how they used their initiative and agency as former slaves and free women and began to study abroad in Europe from the mid-1800s. Despite facing barriers of slavery, anti-literacy laws, race, gender, and doctrines of scientific intellectual inferiority, these women dared to challenge the prevailing attitudes of their time and place which restricted Black women's access to higher education. The thesis focuses on four case studies. They are: abolitionist and physician Sarah Parker Remond (1824-1876), international civil rights activist and clubwoman Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), educator, author, activist, and feminist pioneer Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964), and diplomacy and disarmament expert Merze Tate (1905-1996). These women merit research and recognition not solely because of their contributions to the struggle for racial justice but also because of their determination to pursue higher education abroad. They boldly resisted their raced and gendered roles assigned at birth by a White patriarchal hegemony and dispelled the myth of Black female intellectual inferiority. In this interdisciplinary study, I investigate how the four women negotiated issues of race, gender, and class and how their study abroad experiences informed their lives, careers, and roles as transnational activists. I employ historical case study to analyze these experiences and how their legacies can empower contemporary Black women who are underrepresented in study abroad. My research draws upon archives, memoirs, autobiographies, historic newspapers, and personal papers to create a space for new knowledge that contributes to a richer understanding of Black female resistance in the context of study abroad