This work examines the many popular representations of student life at women's colleges produced in the United States during the Progressive Era. In hundreds of college novels, newspaper accounts, popular periodical essays, and scientific treatises, the "college woman" was described and defined in a period when women's higher education was still socially suspect.

These representations had a large impact on how the public perceived women's higher education, painting a picture of college life that must have seemed irresistible to young women. The public image of the college woman was transformed from that of a homely, sexless oddity, doomed to spinsterhood, to that of a vibrant, attractive, athletic young woman, who would eventually marry.

While other scholars have argued that the Progressive Era was the "golden age" for women's single-sex education, pointing to the many positive depictions of the women's college student in the mass media, Dr. Inness suggests that these representations actually helped to perpetuate the status quo and did little to advance women's social rights.

Adopting a theoretic stand informed by such cultural critics and historians as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Dr. Inness examines the representation of the college woman in this period, showing that representation not only described the college woman but also helped constitute her.