Foreign Exchange

Foreign Exchange is the story of two women and their experiences at an American Episcopalian missionary school in Wuhan from 1929-1937. Yeh Yuanshuang was a student from a privileged Chinese family; Dorothea Kingsley Wakeman was a short-term teacher from a privileged American family. Both would be transformed by their experiences at St. Hilda's School for Girls, whose walls served to protect the school from outside danger as well as to help create a space where new gender expectations could be nurtured, hidden away from the gaze of prying eyes. Examining St. Hilda's through the experiences of these two women illuminates the liberating qualities of female education, the power of personal narrative as an ethnographic/historical research tool, and how the stories of Yuanshuang and Dorothea are embedded in the historical circumstances of their times. The telling of their stories also reveals the impact of the modern world on their parents' generation.