MHS Early American History Seminar

Date: 

Tuesday, December 1, 2015, 5:15pm

Faces, Beauty, and Brains: Physiognomy and Female Education in Post-Revolutionary America

Rachel Walker, University of Maryland Comment: Robert A. Gross, University of Connecticut

This project explores how early republican Americans used physiognomy—the “science” of interpreting facial features—to distinguish between the minds of men and women. The work examines diaries of several “female physiognomists” who focused on evaluating the intellectual capacities of other educated women. Ultimately, the research traces how different groups of individuals used physiognomy to make sense of human nature.