The psychologist Isabelle Kendig had two careers before earning her doctorate and rising to the position of chief psychologist at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. She began as a eugenic field worker in 1912, focusing on Shutesbury, Massachusetts, where she administered intelligence tests to the locals, collected gossip about their character, and created genealogical charts. When she presented her research to Charles Davenport and other social scientists concerned with social defect, Kendig dissented from eugenics orthodoxy. She was shunned by Davenport, who, in turn, falsified her findings to fit his beliefs. She was then hired by Massachusetts and New Hampshire to survey intellectual disability in each state. Following her work in eugenics, Kendig was briefly a leading figure in feminist and antimilitarist campaigns, including the National Women’s Party and the 1924 presidential campaign of Senator Robert La Follette. In 1933, she earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Radcliffe and went on to help guide the field’s post-WWII expansion. True to her feminist ideals and with the help of her husband, she juggled marriage, her three careers, and the parenting of four children. She thus serves as a noteworthy member of the second generation of women in psychology in the United States. Using unpublished correspondence between Kendig, her parents, and her future husband, this article offers a rare glimpse of a young feminist struggling to build a career and a life unconstrained by patriarchal norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
...More
Thesis
Palter, David;
(2014)
Testing for Race: Stanford University, Asian Americans, and Psychometric Testing in California, 1920--1935
(/isis/citation/CBB001567649/)
Book
Kirsten Leng;
(2018)
Sexual Politics and Feminist Science: Women Sexologists in Germany, 1900–1933
(/isis/citation/CBB495950825/)
Book
Bluhm, Agnes;
Bleker, Johanna;
Ludwig, Svenja;
(2007)
Emanzipation und Eugenik: Die Briefe der Frauenrechtlerin, Rassenhygienikerin und Genetikerin Agnes Bluhm an den Studienfreund Alfred Ploetz aus den Jahren 1901--1938
(/isis/citation/CBB001022122/)
Article
Wanhalla, Angela;
(2007)
To “Better the Breed of Men”: Women and Eugenics in New Zealand, 1900-1935
(/isis/citation/CBB001030828/)
Article
Ramsden, Edmund;
(2007)
A Differential Paradox: The Controversy Surrounding the Scottish Mental Surveys of Intelligence and Family Size
(/isis/citation/CBB000771320/)
Article
Ingrid G. Farreras;
(2019)
The professionalization of psychologists as court personnel: Consequences of the first institutional commitment law for the “feebleminded”
(/isis/citation/CBB969643572/)
Article
Nelleke Bakker;
(2015)
Identifying the ‘Subnormal’ Child in an Age of Expansion of Special Education and Child Science in the Netherlands (c.1945–1965)
(/isis/citation/CBB960963418/)
Article
Jessica Lee Mathiason;
(2020)
From Sentimentality to Science: Social Utility, Feminist Eugenics and The End of The Road in Progressive Era America
(/isis/citation/CBB916148769/)
Article
Alexandra Rutherford;
Katharine Milar;
(2017)
“The difference being a woman made” Untold Lives in personal and intellectual context
(/isis/citation/CBB103559604/)
Article
Jennifer S Kain;
(2020)
Standardising Defence Lines: William Perrin Norris, Eugenics and Australian Border Control
(/isis/citation/CBB364703336/)
Book
Todes, Daniel Philip;
(2014)
Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001510129/)
Book
Murdoch, Stephen;
(2007)
IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea
(/isis/citation/CBB000831318/)
Article
Michael Pettit;
(2022)
“Angela's psych squad”: Black psychology against the American carceral state in the 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB352792425/)
Article
Rembis, Michael A.;
(2004)
“I ain't been reading while on parole”: Experts, Mental Tests, and Eugenic Commitment Law in Illinois, 1890--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB000650499/)
Thesis
Masear, Teresa E.;
(2004)
Measuring Heads and Calibrating Minds: The Dark Legacy of Eugenics in American Intelligence Testing
(/isis/citation/CBB001561776/)
Book
Subramaniam, Banu;
(2014)
Ghost Stories for Darwin. The Science of Variation and the Politics of Diversity
(/isis/citation/CBB001500575/)
Article
Crnic, Meghan;
(2009)
Better Babies: Social Engineering for “a Better Nation, a Better World”
(/isis/citation/CBB000932174/)
Thesis
Austin, Stephanie;
(2003)
The Influence of the Feminist Movement In/On the History of Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB001561786/)
Article
Simonton, Dean Keith;
(2010)
Research Notes: The Curious Case of Catharine Cox (Miles): The 1926 Dissertation and Her Miles-Wolfe (1936) Follow-Up
(/isis/citation/CBB001033697/)
Article
Andy Byford;
(2017)
The Imperfect Child in Early Twentieth-century Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB055501257/)
Be the first to comment!