Little House in the Empire

The talk, which is free and open to the public, will start at 7:30 p.m. in Joe Rosenfield '25 Center, Room 101. The Center for Prairie Studies and the departments of education and history are sponsoring his talk.

"Many children first learned something about the North American prairie from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved 'Little House' books," said Jon Andelson, professor of anthropology and director of the Center for Prairie Studies. "Few realize, however, that Wilder herself claimed to have written her novels in part to teach American children about the New Deal’s totalitarian evils, or that Wilder’s books were shaped by an imperialist ideology, itself an expression of American progressive educational thought of her day."

Perlstein, professor of social and cultural studies in education at the University of California – Berkeley, will discuss these surprising and fascinating connections. He also will compare Wilder to John Dewey, a progressive education reformer in the 20th century.

Both Wilder and Dewey celebrated pioneer self-direction and the authenticity of pioneer life, Wilder through the imperialist ideology of her books and Dewey through educational reform. Comparing the two, Perlstein contends, sheds light on the integral role of the frontier in American educational thought. 

Perlstein is an education scholar committed to the creation of schools that address social inequalities in both American schools and life. He has written on various topics, such as race and class conflicts in urban education, radical school activism, gender, and school violence, as well as the African American freedom struggle. He has been published in various academic journals, such as History of Education Quarterly, Paedagogica Historica, and Teachers College Record.

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