Jane Addams

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Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was an American social worker, sociologist, philosopher and reformer. She was also the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and a founder of the U.S. Settlement House Movement.

1 Biography
2 Publications
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams was educated in the United States and Europe, graduating from the Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in Rockford, Illinois.

In 1889 she and Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, one of the first settlement houses in the United States. Influenced by Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, settlement houses provided welfare for a neighborhood's poor and a center for social reform. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults; kindergarten classes; clubs for older children; a public kitchen; an art gallery; a coffeehouse; a gymnasium; a girls club; a swimming pool; a book bindery; a music school; a drama group; a library; and labor-related divisions.

Hull House also served as a women's sociological institution. Addams was a friend and colleague to the early members of the Chicago School of Sociology, influencing their thought through her work in applied sociology and, in 1893, co-authoring the Hull-House Maps and Papers that came to define the interests and methodologies of the School. She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including women's rights, ending child-labor, and the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike in which she was a mediator. Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work", Addams did not consider herself a social worker. She combined the central concepts of symbolic interactionism with the theories of cultural feminism and pragmatism to form her sociological ideas (Deegan, 1988). medallion of Jane Addams to celebrate her life and achievements. The medallion since has been collected by several important museums.

The Jane Addams Peace Association together with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom give the annual Jane Addams Children's Book Awards to children's books that promote peace, equality, multiculturalism, and peaceful solutions.

[edit] Publications

Democracy and social ethics, New York: Macmillan, 1902.
Children in American street trades, New York: National Child Labor Committee, 1905.
New ideals of peace, Chautauqua, N.Y.: Chautauqua Press, 1907.
The Wage-earning Woman and the State, Boston: Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government, 1910s.
Twenty Years at Hull House. By Jane Addams. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912. Copyright 1910. On-line edition at the Celebration of Women Writers.
Symposium: child labor on the stage, New York: National Child Labor Committee, ?1911.

[edit] References

Jane Addams on a US postage stamp of 1940

Deegan, Mary. Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892-1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, Inc., 1988.
Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.