Tending the Student Body: Youth, Health, and the Modern University
© 2015
In the early twentieth century, university administrators and educators regarded bodily health as a marker of an individual’s moral and mental strength and as a measure of national vitality. Beset by social anxieties about the physical and moral health of their students, they introduced compulsory health services and physical education programs in order to shape their students’ character. Tending the Student Body examines the development of these health programs at Canadian universities and the transformation of their goals over the first half of the twentieth century from fostering moral character to promoting individualism, self-realization, and mental health.
Drawing on extensive records from Canadian universities, Catherine Gidney examines the gender and class dynamics of these programs, their relationship to changes in medical and intellectual thought, and their contribution to ideas about the nature and fulfilment of the self. Her research will be of interest to historians of medicine, gender, sport, and higher education.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 304 pages
- Illustrations: 9
- Dimensions: 6.0in x 0.0in x 9.0in
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Reviews
‘Gidney’s book will make a good resource for teaching due to her focused writing style and its fascinating look into student life in the past.’
Jane Nicholas
Acadiensis vol 44:02:2015‘In this excellent new study of Canadian higher education, Catherine Gidney explores the origins of campus health facilities and athletic programs, services that are now an expected part of undergraduate program.’
Sara Z. Burke
Canadian Historical Review vol 96:04:2015‘Gidney does an excellent job connecting her discussion of specific health services and physical education programs to the larger societal developments occurring throughout the first half of the twentieth century.’
Roberta Lexier
Urban History Review vol 44: 1-2:2015‘Catherine Gidney has deftly analyzed an impressive amount of previously unexamined archival material to support her findings with conviction…. This study effectively highlights the ongoing dialectic between school and society.’
Cynthia Comacchio
History of Education vol 45:06:2016‘This book provides a solid foundation for other scholars who wish to do more detailed studies of the history of student health and physical education in Canadian colleges and universities.’
Heather Munro Prescott
Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth vol10:01:2017‘This fine piece of work provides new insights into the way the nature and culture of life in Canadian universities changed during the first sixty years of the twentieth century.’
Donald Fisher
BC Studies February 2017
“Tending the Student Body establishes Catherine Gidney as a leading historian of higher education in Canada. This book makes a significant contribution to the history of university life and to the social history of medicine and health in the world of Canadian higher education.”
Paul Axelrod, Faculty of Education, York University
“Tending the Student Body is a stimulating and insightful read that illustrates the complex ways in which agency and structure worked together to affect social, cultural, and academic discourses about the function of the student body and the mind. Gidney’s research in the archives and her command of the extensive interdisciplinary literature are thorough and deep.”
Lisa Panayotidis, Faculty of Education, University of Calgary -
Author Information
Catherine Gidney is an adjunct professor in the Department of History at St. Thomas University. -
Table of contents
Introduction
1. Institutional Development of Student Health Programs
2. Ailments and Epidemics
3. Physical Culture and Character Formation
4. Health in Home and Body
5. Female Students’ Health and the Creation of New Occupational Opportunities for Women
6. Changing Contexts and Programs, 1930s to 1960s
7. Shifting Health Priorities: Tuberculosis and Mental Health
8. From Character to Personality: Changing Visions of Citizenship, 1940s to 1960s
ConclusionAppendix A: Physical Training at the University of Toronto
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Prizes
English-language Book/Anthology Prize awarded by the Canadian History of Education Association - Joint winner Or co-winner in 2016 -
Subjects and Courses
