Frazer, Katelyn

Description

Through close study of St. Christophers Schoolan all-boys school in Richmond, Virginiaduring its first fifty years, this thesis historicizes upper-class white masculinity in Virginia during the first half of the twentieth century. The schools founder, Churchill Gibson Chamberlayne, linked the Lost Cause myth with other movements in education at the time, especially Muscular Christianity and the country day school movement. By looking at how students and administrators at St. Christophers made and remade traditions surrounding notions of masculinity, in addition to more muted manifestations of gender at the school, illuminate the existence of a gender hierarchy even before gender integration. In the 1960s, the school participated in a curriculum exchange with its sister school, St. Catherines, which caused a considerable backlash from St. Christophers students. St. Christophers boys appropriated the language of Virginian segregationists to address women taking a few classes at their school, vowing to protect the exclusively male spaces they cherished. The thesis additionally investigates how both St. Catherines and St. Christophers students reacted to racial integration at their schools, revealing the role whiteness played in their conceptions of gender.

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