"Exploring educational sites that range from carceral institutions for girls to public high schools, Ruby Oram’s Home Work broadens our conception of turn-of-the-twentieth-century school reform and our understanding of women’s progressivism. Focused on Chicago as a case study, she analyzes public education as a site of struggle between middle-class women reformers and working-class girls, both Black and white. The outcomes of those struggles, Oram demonstrates, illuminate the sources of gender- and race-inequalities in public education for decades thereafter."
 

Robyn Muncy, author of 'Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935'

"In Home Work, Oram adds an important new perspective about the history of industrial cities like Chicago. Oram shows that working-class girls flocked to new high schools not for housekeeping and dressmaking classes, but as a base for careers as teachers, nurses, and secretaries.” 

Ann Durkin Keating, author of 'The World of Juliette Kinzie: Chicago before the Fire'

“Home Work is ambitious in its wide-ranging analysis, exploring state reformatory education, vocational training for girls, and home economics curricula, among other subjects. It is an important addition to the historical scholarship on urban America, the history of social and education reform in Chicago, and the gendered and classed dimensions of girlhood, womanhood, education, and labor in the industrial era.” 

Lilia Fernández, author of 'Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago'