Beyond professional boundaries: Underrepresented histories of American social work in the 19th and 20th centuries

Add to Calendar: Add to Calendar 2024-02-21 11:00:00 2024-02-21 12:00:00 Beyond professional boundaries: Underrepresented histories of American social work in the 19th and 20th centuries Event Description Attend this free lecture provided by a Mandel School staff member on the history of social work. Most American social work histories argued that white reformer women in Northern cities professionalized social work by taking a maternalistic and scientific approach to social problems between 1870 and 1914. These histories relied on criteria created at the turn of the 20th century by social scientists, who distributed prestige according to a worker’s proximity to professionalizing structures. Institutions of professionalization, like the state, the university or membership organizations, systematically excluded or undervalued women, racialized minorities and poor or working-class people. Katherine Lewis identifies and addresses gaps in the historiography by exploring social work outside the dominant charities, settlements, clinics and social welfare agencies of Northern American cities. Katherine Lewis, MSSA, is a licensed social worker, a PhD student in History and a research associate at Begun Center. Zoom Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences America/New_York public