Clare’s first Badger Scholar

I am Jasmin Bath, a first year PhD student in American History at Clare College. My research investigates the livesof working-class single mothers in New York City between 1827 and 1857. Specifically, it examines how (in)dependent mothers – those women who had children, but no partner that could fulfil the expected male role of the ‘breadwinner’ – navigated their position as the primary provider for their families in an era of rapid capitalist development.

My project explores two fundamental threads. In the first thread, which considers the representation of (in)dependent mothers and the behavioural prescriptions society imposed on them, I aim to examine the cross-class relations between elite and middle-class reformers and philanthropists and working-class single mothers. In particular, I will explore how working-class mothers negotiated these social networks in order to survive the instability and often unrelenting turmoil of poverty in a period of intense capitalist development. The second thread of this project explores the consequences of (in)dependent women’s precarity. I especially want to interweave an examination of how national crises magnified localised everyday crises such as sudden unemployment, underemployment and low wages.

My research agenda is very much informed by my own experiences. I grew up in Dagenham, a small town in East London. It is perhaps most well-known as the home of the British Ford Factory, which in 1968 saw female sewing machinists engage in a strike as they demanded equal pay with men. Women’s navigation of, and engagement with, industrial capitalism is something which hits very close to home. As the child of a working-class mother, hearing about and seeing how my mother navigated the rise of neoliberalism, Thatcherism, and economic crisis all sparked my interest in how those with very few resources manage to survive a turbulent economy.

My own background, as a working-class, Cockney, first-generation, dyslexic student makes me incredibly grateful to be named the first Badger Scholar at Clare College, named in honour of Professor Tony Badger. I know that Professor Badger spent much of his career trying to expand access to higher education and promote the study of American history in Britain by British students. I am so happy that I get to contribute to this legacy, and illustrate that neither your accent, nor your postcode, should limit your dreams, even if this dream is pursuing a PhD in American History at Clare College, Cambridge.