Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Ellen Swallow Richards, an American pioneer of sanitation and the home economics movement, created a unique brand of feminist environmentalism that influenced nineteenth-century Christian ideals of social betterment. This project focuses on archived collections of Richards’ writings, as they relate to her development a new field of study–euthenics–which evangelized about the betterment of society through the improvement of environmental conditions. She often applied this to food, as in The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning (1882), and Food Materials and Their Adulterations (1885), and helped to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act in New England. I contend that her work took a fascinating turn when its feminist environmentalism dovetailed with the ideals of Christian social betterment from religious thinkers like Seventh-day Adventist health reformer, John Harvey Kellogg, and the Beecher sisters. Richards’ work helped seemingly disparate social causes to align, revealing the ties between quests for social betterment in an era of great cultural and religious change.