{"product_id":"maria-mitchell-and-the-sexing-of-science-isbn-9780807021439","title":"Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe story of one of America's first professional astronomers and the changes that led to science being a male-dominated field\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are a number of intellectual women from the 19th century whose crucial roles in the philosophical, social, and scientific debates that roiled the era have not been fully examined.Among them is the astronomer Maria Mitchell. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGiven the relative dearth of women scientists today, most of us assume that science has always been a masculine domain. But as Renée Bergland reminds us, science and humanities were not seen as separate spheres in the nineteenth century; indeed, before the Civil War, women flourished in science and mathematics, disciplines that were considered less politically threatening and less profitable than the humanities. Mitchell apprenticed with her father, an amateur astronomer; taught herself the higher math of the day; and for years regularly \"swept\" the clear Nantucket night sky with the telescope in her rooftop observatory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1847, thanks to these diligent sweeps, Mitchell discovered a comet and was catapulted to international fame. Within a few years she was one of America's first professional astronomers; as \"computer of Venus\"—a sort of human calculator—for the U.S. Navy's Nautical Almanac, she calculated the planet's changing position. After an intellectual tour of Europe that included a winter in Rome with Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mitchell was invited to join the founding faculty at Vassar College, where she spent her later years mentoring the next generation of women astronomers. Tragically, opportunities for her students dried up over the next few decades as the increasingly male scientific establishment began to close ranks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMitchell protested this cultural shift in vain. In this compulsively readable biography, Renée Bergland chronicles the ideological, academic, and economic changes that led to the original sexing of science—now so familiar that most of us have never known it any other way.INTRODUCTION\u003cbr\u003eVenus in the Sunshine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 1\u003cbr\u003eUrania’s Island\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 2\u003cbr\u003eNantucket Athena\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 3\u003cbr\u003eThe Sexes of Science\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 4\u003cbr\u003eMiss Mitchell’s Comet\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 5\u003cbr\u003e“A Center of Rude Eyes and Tongues”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 6\u003cbr\u003eThe Shoulders of Giants\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 7\u003cbr\u003eThe Yankee Corinnes\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 8\u003cbr\u003eA Mentor in Florence\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 9\u003cbr\u003eThe War Years\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 10\u003cbr\u003eVassar Female College\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 11\u003cbr\u003eNo Miserable Bluestocking\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 12\u003cbr\u003e“Good Woman That She Is”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 13\u003cbr\u003eThe Undevout Astronomer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 14\u003cbr\u003eRetrograde Motion\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER 15\u003cbr\u003eUrania’s Inversion\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEPILOGUE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eACKNOWLEDGMENTS\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNOTES\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eINDEXThe best thing in its line since Dava Sobel's Longitude. Bergland tells a great, if too little known, story of an intellectual woman in nineteenth-century New England. And it is beautifully told: I simply could not put it down. Anyone who cares about women's education in America should read this compelling and indispensable book. —Robert D. Richardson, author of \u003ci\u003eHenry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, Emerson: The Mind on Fire\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWilliam James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Renée Bergland recounts the story of Maria Mitchell's life and work in glorious and careful detail. One feels and hears the sounds of Mitchell's native Nantucket and her adopted Vassar, and comes to understand how one of the 'gentler sex' advanced astronomy in her day.\"—Londa Schiebinger, author of \u003ci\u003eHas Feminism Changed Science?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRenée Bergland\u003c\/b\u003e teaches English and Gender\/Cultural Studies at Simmons College and  holds a research appointment in Women's and Gender Studies at Harvard.  President of the New England American Studies Association and a former  Fulbright scholar, she received a \"We the People\" grant from the NEH for  her work on Maria Mitchell. She is author of \u003ci\u003eThe National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects\u003c\/i\u003e, and co-editor (with Gary Williams) of \u003ci\u003ePhilosophies of Sex: Critical Essays on the Hermaphrodite\u003c\/i\u003e. She has also written for the \u003ci\u003eBoston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eL.A. Times\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304561823973,"sku":"NP9780807021439","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807021439.jpg?v=1767732264","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/maria-mitchell-and-the-sexing-of-science-isbn-9780807021439","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}