Join author and historian Susan Schulten as she delves into early American education and geography. In the decades after the American revolution, schoolchildren routinely made maps. Map drawing and geography were particularly appropriate subjects for girls, both a pathway to literacy and a means of demonstrating accomplishment. Many went on to become teachers themselves, and carried these practices with them into an ever-growing national network of female academies and seminaries. By drawing their country, students were making the nation manifest, visualizing territory that most would never see firsthand. Map drawing was part of an intensely graphic education, and a closer look at these charming, detailed, and elegant artifacts reveals a great deal about female education in the early republic.
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