Scott, Anne Firor “The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminar, 1822-1872,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (1979), 3-25.

== Summary ==
This
article examines the Troy Female Seminary, which was the first institution to
offer American women a curriculum similar to that of contemporary men’s
college. While its stated aim was to educate women for responsible motherhood
and train them to be teachers, it was more than that, Anne Scott contends, it
became a source of feminism and the incubator of a new style of female
personality. The proliferation of these institutions influenced and spread
feminism during the 19th century. Scott counters previous
scholarship that has largely treated these institutions as “bulwarks of
tradition” and thus has looked to reform movements and voluntary associations
as the seed-beds of feminism.  “Higher
education for women,” Scott argues, “as it began to develop at Troy and spread
thereafter, played an important part in the diffusion of feminist values.”
While couched in a discourse of women’s “traditional role,” these institutions
exposed women to new and empowering ideas and spread feminist ideas
geographical as well as in each succeeding generation. 
See Also: Mary Kelley