The Academic Kitchen: A Social History of Gender Stratification at the University of California, Berkeley (SUNY series, Frontiers in Education)

The Academic Kitchen tells the story of the evolution of an all-women's department, the Department of Home Economics, at the University of California, Berkeley from 1905 to 1954. The book's unique focus on the connection between gender and departmental status challenges organizational theorists and higher education specialists to reconsider their traditional analysis of academic departments. By incorporating gender in the analysis, Nerad reveals the process by which departments traditionally dominated by women, including education, library science, nursing, social welfare, and home economics, begin as separate (and unequal) programs and are subsequently eliminated (or sustained without economic rewards, prestige, and power) when administrators no longer regard them as useful.

Maresi Nerad is Director of Graduate Research at the University of California, Berkeley. She has published several works, including Graduate Education in the United States (with R. June and D. Miller).