Special Lectures
Our fascinating historical lectures for majors and nonmajors go beyond the Weber Historical Society lecture series and annual Lampros Lecture.
From College of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Department of History
Department of Criminal Justice
Department of Psychology
& Women and Gender Studies
Monday,
February 27
12:30 pm
Lecture Hall LH 101
Snacks and drinks provided
Dr. Erin Bush
"Objectionable Girls: Criminalizing Female Behavior in the Early 20th Century"
In the early twentieth-century child savers “reclaimed” wayward girls in Virginia through two juvenile reformatory programs—the whites-only Home and Industrial School for Girls and the Industrial Home School for Colored Girls—between 1910 and 1942. Virginia’s progressive reformers constructed and managed their girl problem within their southern racial caste system by applying overt eugenic tactics. The eugenic thinking and racism shaped state-wide reform policies in ways not previously understood. Progressive reformers policed African American in the cities and white girls in rural and mountain areas of the Commonwealth. The presence of segregated, state-supported reformatories makes Virginia an important case study to examine the crossroads of juvenile justice, racial politics, and the use of “science” in southern progressive reform.