Dominant Beliefs and Alternative Voices: Discourse, Belief, and Gender in American Study

This book examines the development of American undergraduate study abroad to the present day, investigating how powerful derogatory beliefs about international exchange have constrained its growth and examining the policy designed to increase participation in overseas education. In the early twentieth century, Americans came to perceive U.S. higher education as superior to the European institutions they previously admired. Whereas American men once sought European educations to pursue the professions, they now stayed home. After World War I, study abroad became the domain of undergraduate women, often from private women's colleges perceived to be bastions of wealth and purposeless liberal education. Their presence then and now contributes to the perception that study abroad is a Grand Tour, unconnected to the functional and career-oriented education prized in America. This book contributes to a new understanding of why negative beliefs have so long defined study overseas; how and why studyabroad has been pursued by those who support it; the role overseas education abroad has played in the lives of women who are its primary participants; and to a new foundation upon which to build policy about foreign study in the twenty-first century.