Female Lecturers at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Bestuzhev Women’s Higher Education Courses as a Manifestation of Russian Emancipation of the Second Half of the 19th — Early 20th Century

Abstract

The article describes the phenomenon of female “intrusion” into academia, particularly the social and legal status of the first female historians in Russia who became university lecturers. Analysis of the self-fulfillment strategies that Russian female historians pursued in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century allows to reconstruct the social mechanisms that they used in their zeal to achieve the status of highly-qualified scholars and lecturers at universities. Regulatory documents defining the status of faculty in the Russian Empire, as well as Bestuzhev Courses faculty meeting reports and unpublished memoirs are analyzed to reconstruct the sources and mechanisms of overcoming gender stereotypes, the long way that female historians had to go to be allowed to teach and study the science of teaching, the innovations that they brought to the Bestuzhev Courses teaching practices, the specific aspects of their approach to teaching, and the legal and social norms they had to change to secure themselves a faculty status equal to that of male academics. This article is the first publication analyzing the regulatory enforcement of placing the graduates from the Faculty of History and Philology of the Bestuzhev Courses into jobs. It also addresses for the first time the economic aspects of female teaching and the ways in which female lecturers interacted with course administrators and other faculty staff.