Upper School Intersession 2025

Why were grown men once absolutely terrified to ride trains? What would compel well-to-do women to swear off all physical activity and eat nothing but heavy cream soups? Why were doctors so worried about wristwatches? How did Coca-Cola – with traces of cocaine – become America’s favorite headache remedy?

In a word: anxiety. 

In this session, we’ll explore the history of modern America through its wild, amusing, and sometimes disturbing responses to big changes that included the rise of cities, new technologies, lightning-fast transportation, access to drugs, and shifting gender roles and identities. To do this we'll examine medical literature, fairytales, Victorian fiction, and a bit of 19th century pseudoscience.

For students interested in history, medical mysteries, gender studies, source analysis, and storytelling.

The witch’s hat, towers and turrets, gingerbread latticework, and the attic. In the Victorian era, houses with these architectural details represented all the comforts associated with the American Dream. But by the 20th century, ornate Victorian homes began to warn us: something’s not right in there; something nefarious is lurking inside.

Why?

In this session, we’ll take a ghost tour through the cultural history of Victorian architecture in America. With a little help from the Brothers Grimm, Shirley Jackson, Tim Burton, Alfred Hitchcock, and Sarah Winchester, we’ll explore what made these structures so iconically creepy.