Phil Homan's Research Featured in Journal

Oboler Library Associate Professor Philip Homan’s research on Kittie Wilkins, the Horse Queen of Idaho, has been cited in the peer-reviewed journal of the Department of Education at the University of Calcutta, India. Known at the turn of the twentieth century as the only American woman whose sole occupation was horse dealing, Wilkins, who subscribed to many of tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood, was nevertheless a typical Victorian woman.

 According to Nancy E. Wright, “Margins and Marginalization in History: Examples, Reasons, and Significance from the American Experience,” Indian Journal of Educational Research 6 (March 2017), pp. 81-105, Wilkins “challenged the status quo but did so within certain parameters of conformity.” Naming Wilkins as one who defied categorization because of incomplete conformity and non-conformity and therefore was marginalized by history because she didn’t “represent a larger universe,” Wright uses Wilkins’s story as an example of honoring digressions in historiography and pedagogy by “venturing into the margins” in order to “keep vibrant the art of discovery which is the lifeblood of all learning.”

Wright, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Long Island University-Brooklyn, was recent Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in History and International Relations at the University of Calcutta.