Bryn Mawr History Projects
The students, faculty, staff, and administrators of Bryn Mawr College have, for many years, worked to surface the complex histories of the College and their legacies. This work takes many forms, including those that are/aren't visible, are/aren't polished, are/aren't ephemeral. On this page, we include and appreciate a small fraction of this work with the intention of encouraging greater and deeper engagements with the College’s history. We particularly feature projects that center the voices and experiences of members of marginalized communities.
If you know of work that should be included here, please send your suggestions via email.
Student Work
Students have been at the core of much of the recent work surfacing Bryn Mawr’s diverse histories and identifying the gaps and silences in the stories we tell about ourselves. The work included below has been produced by students, often as part of their academic work or through fellowships and internships. Each student has undertaken this work under time and resource limitations that necessarily impact the outcome. What emerges is a bright, shining idea, not always carried to completion and never to perfection but always with conviction.
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A collaborative project started by Emma Kioko '15 and Grace Pusey '15 that draws from the College Archives to bring its history of racism back into colloquial awareness on campus. It also focuses on the experiences that Black and Brown students, staff members, and faculty members have had at different points in the institution's history. |
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Candid Campus: The Lesser Known Narratives of Bryn Mawr College |
A digital exhibit created by Samone Rowe '14 during her internship with The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education that draws from scrapbooks from the College Archives to examine campus culture. |
| For Roses, Too | An exhibit that seeks to connect current students to the ongoing legacies of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry on the centennial of its founding, drawing attention to not only the overarching themes of the Summer School's history, but also the nuance of the students' lives on campus and the ways in which Bryn Mawr affected their lives and outlook on the world. |
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History of Gender Identity and Expression at Bryn Mawr College |
A digital archive created by Emmett Binkowski '16 as the final product of a project conducted in Summer 2014 for an internship at The Impact Center. |
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A digital project created by Caitlin Haskett '20 that tells the story of Jewish Life at Bryn Mawr College from 1938 to 1958 through excerpts from oral histories of eight Jewish Alumnae. The project was funded by a Impact Center Summer Research Fellowship. |
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An exhibit created by Alexis De La Rosa '15 and Lauren Footman '14 that collected and shared experiences of Bryn Mawr College students, faculty, and staff from the African and Latinx Diasporas. The project was funded by Impact Center internships. |
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A project created by Brenna Levitin '16 to uncover the histories of LGBT individuals and communities at Bryn Mawr College between the years 1970 and 2000. The project was funded through the Tri-Co Digital Humanities Initiative and The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education. |
Efforts were made to obtain permission from all creators listed above to include their work in this list and to invite them to shape the description of their project. If you believe your work should or should not be included in this list, please send us an email.
College Projects and Programs
Staff, faculty, and students at Bryn Mawr have collaborated on a number of projects and programs that explore the College's history. Below is a list of several past, present, and future projects and programs that have helped shape how we think about the College's histories.
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An in-progress project to share information about two Bryn Mawr College student-run conferences on race relations in 1924 and 1931. Funded by a Digital Bryn Mawr seed grant. |
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| Arch Project |
Bryn Mawr College’s ARCH Project (Art Remediating Campus Histories), in partnership with Monument Lab, is a multi-year collaboration with students, staff, faculty, and alums to design a process and commission a lasting campus public artwork that responds to the legacy of exclusionary practices at the College. |
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College Women is a searchable portal of diaries, letters, scrapbooks and photographs from the archives of the Seven Sisters schools. It was created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. |
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An online locus of scholarship on the history of women’s higher education. Active from 2011-2016, it was created with support from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation. |
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A project that reconstructs the spaces on campus where women practiced science at the turn of the nineteenth century in three-dimensional space. |
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A project to collect and share oral histories related to Perry House and its affiliated communities, funded by a Digital Bryn Mawr seed grant. |
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Social Justice Partnership Program |
Conceptualized in 2007 by a group of faculty, students, administrators, and staff in response to racial tensions and problematic incidents on campus, this program developed a curriculum for and supported mixed cohorts of faculty, students, administrators, and staff meeting regularly to work on communicating across differences. Folded in 2012 into the concentration in Peace, Conflict, and Social Justice Studies. |
| Who Built Bryn Mawr? | Who Built Bryn Mawr? is an ongoing project that supports research and curatorial opportunities for students interested in changing the way the College understands its history. |
Exhibitions
The following exhibitions have shared many narratives about Bryn Mawr and Bryn Mawr's faculty, staff, and students, but they do not represent all perspectives. Some exhibitions explicitly engage with the histories and legacies of racism, while others have focused on the accomplishments of predominately white women. We hope these exhibitions will inspire further research that results in exhibitions that provide a more inclusive representation of Bryn Mawr College and its communities.
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Feb. 23–Oct. 31, 2017 |
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On Selecting: Profiles of Alumnae Donors to the African Art and Artifacts Collection |
Jan. 25–Sept. 25, 2017 |
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"The Best Thing in a Girl's Life": Early Women's Colleges in Fiction and Fact |
January–May 2009 |
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Breaking Ground, Breaking Tradition: Bryn Mawr and the First Generation of Women Archaeologists |
September–December 2007 |
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Bryn Mawr Plays: Dramatic Productions at Bryn Mawr College 1889-1920 |
2002–2003 |
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Dedicated to the Cause: Bryn Mawr Women and the Right to Vote |
Sept. 26–Dec. 20, 2002 |
Publications
Research on the College's history has led to many print publications about the history of the College, some of which explicitly address the legacies of racism and anti-semitism. For a bibliography of published works related to the history of Bryn Mawr College, please visit the Bryn Mawr College History Zotero library.
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| A Refugee Scholar from Nazi Germany: Emmy Noether and Bryn Mawr College | An article by Qinna Shen, Assistant Professor of German, about the "creative mathematical genius" Emmy Noether who taught at Bryn Mawr through a program designed to rescue Jewish scholars from Nazi Germany. |
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An article by Florence Goff, retired Associate Chief Information Officer, for the Alumnae Bulletin which relates the history of admissions for black students at Bryn Mawr |
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A book, edited by Anne Bruder, produced for the College's 125th anniversary, that provides a detailed history of Bryn Mawr College |
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A self-published book by Hilda Worthington Smith about her experiences directing the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry. |
If you know of work that should be included here, please send suggestions via email.