A 'Female Columbus' in 1887 America: Marking New Social Territory

As a self-styled 'female Columbus', E. Catherine Bates took a transcontinental journey across North America with a woman companion in the late 1880s and, on her return to England, published A Year in the Great Republic . This paper, following critical theory approaches to the study of travel writing, explores the ways in which several of Bates's many-layered social identities as a woman of the British e lite class came to the fore in her travel narrative. I argue that Bates constructed her narrative primarily around her shifting gender identities- as 'feminine' and 'feminist'- and suggest that imperialistic writing was less apparent because she was travelling to a place that had an 'empire-to-empire' rather than a 'colony-to-empire', relationship to Britain during its 'Age of Empire'. In this paper I am searching for a middle ground between what I have termed 'modernist' interpretations of women's travel writing and the more recent post-structural interpretations. I make the case that Victorian women travellers' revisionist commentary on gender roles, as well as their observations of domestic scenes, should remain in focus as we continue to mark them for historical study.

A summary of the 2004 Ohio Music Education Association research forum presented by Dr. Patricia J. Flowers.

Each year, the Research Committee of the Ohio Music Education Association sponsors a half-day Research Forum prior to the beginning of the state music education association conference. In 2004, Dr. Patricia J. Flowers, Professor of Music at the Ohio State University was the guest speaker. This article summarizes her talk on the process of becoming a music education researcher