The Cult of Domesticity *Please note: This workshop is currently full. To join a waiting list or for more information please contact Caryn Koplik (919) 406-0111, or ckoplik@nationalhumanitiescenter.org.

Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Time: 7:00-8:30 p.m. (EST) Registration Deadline: October 9, 2009

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The Cult of Domesticity was a societal ideal promoted especially during the mid- and late nineteenth century. It provided a behavioral handbook, a "code," for middle-class white women in America that served as a way to value, to judge, and to control how they would both see themselves and be understood by others. Women who questioned the social, economic, and artistic limitations that this code imposed learned to challenge it from within the "sphere" of influence that it prescribed. This workshop will explore how the cult of domesticity constrained women, and how some women transformed it into a tool of empowerment. Leader: Lucinda MacKethan, Professor Emerita, Department of English, North Carolina State University; National Humanities Center Fellow