FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17 2008

Grigas presents paper at meeting of the Organization of American
Historians

COLUMBUS, Miss. - Dr. Carol S. Grigas, visiting assistant professor of
History in the Department of History, Political Science and Geography at
Mississippi University for Women, recently presented a paper, “Expanding Possibilities: Alice Gulick and the ‘New Woman’ as Foreign Missionary in Spain, 1892 - 1903, at the 2008 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) in New York City.

The OAH is the largest learned society devoted to the study of American
history.

Her paper was part of a panel presentation on the “Globalization of U.S. Educational Ideals: Re-interpretations of Domesticity.” It argued that the educational project of the American missionary Alice Gulick in Spain was an enterprise transformed by cultural shifts in America’s definition of ideal womanhood. The project, the International Institute prepared female students to pass with honors rigorous state examinations to earn university degrees. This was a unique achievement for its time and Gulick’s work in Spain was critically significant for the political and cultural modernization of that country.

Grigas work has benefited from generous support by MUW in the form of
grants from the Faculty Senate, the Department of History and the Southern Women’s Institute, as well as the Government of Spain and Houghton Library at Harvard University.