Development Innovator or Marital Educator? Transnational Home Scientists in India, 1947-1972

This dissertation aims to reclaim the significance and innovations of female home scientists in India’s development from 1947 until 1972. Historiographies of India’s development in the post-independence period have largely overlooked how gendered projects, such as the establishment of home science programs in new Indian agricultural universities, were directed by professional women. To discover the ways and to what extent home scientists played an essential role in India’s modernization projects, this study investigates the transnational interactions of U.S. home economists and Indian women who earned advanced degrees in home economics subjects in the United States during the Cold War. Analyzing archival material, personal collections, oral history interviews, online subscription databases, and open-access repositories, this dissertation recovers the voices and lived experiences of these professional women. Additionally, this process uncovered a rich collection of first-person narratives. Over one hundred and twenty-five theses and dissertations written by Indian home scientists during the first three decades after Independence, collectively and individually, illustrate their pioneering leadership. The significance of this research is that it reveals home scientists’ personal and professional renegotiations, setbacks, triumphs, and transnational connections with philanthropic organizations, government officials, and U.S. home economists as they collaborated and led nation-building projects.