Title: Educando donzelas: trabalhos manuais e ensino religioso (1859-1934)
Abstract: The objective of this research is to analyse the teaching of embroidery and other works in textile production inside the educational system developed from the second half of the 19 th and beginning of the 20 th centuries, directing particular attention to the confessional education of the schools of the Congregation Saint-Joseph of Chambéry.The present research analyses how needle crafts have a wide identificiation with women.These works have helped on the construction of an image of femininity, taking active part on the formation of the gender identity.The 19 th century recognized the school as a privileged space for diffusion of these female traditions.To women, scholarity emerges with the important mission of forming the wife, the mother and, with it, found the ideals of the nation.On this educational project, the curriculum reserves one particularity, the exclusive education of needle works to schools of the female sex.We believe this particularity to be revealing proof of how needleworks were seen as the perfect instrument for the constructing of femininity, and, in confessional schools, as an inculcation vehicle for the reformative Christian values of ultramontanism.