Title:
Milicent Washburn Shinn papers, 1889-1935
Milicent W. Shinn papers
Creator/Contributor:
Shinn, Milicent Washburn, 1858-1940, creator
Abstract:
Includes correspondence, publications, and research papers in support of Milicent W. Shinn's writings on child development.
Date:
1889 (issued)
Subject:
Shinn, Milicent Washburn -- 1858-1940 -- Archives
Shinn, Milicent Washburn -- 1858-1940
Child development -- Research
Child psychology
Women psychologists
Note:
COLLECTION STORED IN PART OFF-SITE: Advance notice required for use.
Milicent Washburn Shinn papers, 1889-1935, BANC MSS 90/180 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
In English; a few articles and clippings in German.
Related collection: Milicent Washburn Shinn papers, circa 1882-1906 (BANC MSS 68/152 c).
As the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from the University of California, Milicent Shinn is credited today for her outstanding
early American study, "Notes on the Development of a Child." First published in 1898 as a doctoral dissertation, this work
is still hailed as a masterpiece and a classic in its field. A native Californian, Shinn was born in 1858 to parents who emigrated
from the East and established a farming homestead in Niles, California, where she lived her entire life. In 1879, at the age
of 25, she became editor of the Overland Monthly, a literary magazine that had fallen on hard times in post-Civil War California.
Dividing her time between the family ranch and the journal, Shinn cared for her aging parents, ran the ranch with her brother
and his wife, and helped care for their daughter, Ruth, who was born in 1890. Inspired by personal interest in her niece,
Shinn applied her writer's skills to create a carefully recorded and minutely detailed two-year account of her niece's physical
growth and emotional development. Delivered as a paper entitled "The First Two Years of the Child" at the World's Columbian
Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Shinn's observational study was hailed as the first of its kind in America. Convinced by others
that her work represented a significant contribution to child psychology, Shinn resigned from the Overland Monthly in 1894
and enrolled as a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Berkeley, completing the degree with the publication
of her dissertation in 1898. Compelling family needs and pressures led Shinn to abandon her scholarly pursuits and return
to the family ranch to care for her invalid mother and aging father. By 1913, in her mid-fifties and in ill-health herself,
Shinn undertook the education of her younger brother's four children, devoting the rest of her life to her family until her
death in 1940. (Scarborough, Elizabeth, and Laurel Furumoto. Untold Lives: The First Generation of American Women Psychologists.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.)
Physical Description:
print
5 cartons, 1 box, 1 portfolio (6.25 linear ft.)
Language:
English
German
Origin:
California
Copyright Note:
COLLECTION STORED IN PART OFF-SITE: Advance notice required for use.