Student Life

Student life may be glimpsed through student diaries from the 1820s through the 1920s, and also through letters written by 19th century students to parents and friends. Among the narrative diaries with their accounts of living accommodations, classes, faculty members, and social activities are several account books kept by students which record their every expenditure during their college careers. Scrapbooks kept by students are a source of photographs, programs, announcements, and other ephemera, which, except for the efforts of the scrapbook compilers, would not have survived.

19th century student life can also be seen in the broadsides of student exhibitions and junior burials.

The records of the Cammarian Club, the student governing body that established college customs and traditions and became an agent for student reform and for communication with the administration, range from 1904 to 1966.

The theatre collection is quite extensive, starting with the beginning of theatre at Brown in the 1870s and continuing into the 2000s. This collection includes photographs, playbills, scripts, and reviews. The meeting minutes of Sock and Buskin, 1901–2003, chart the growth of theatre at Brown in the 20th century.

The papers of the Brown Christian Association, 1908–1967, include records not only of the religious life of the student body, but also document student volunteerism and community outreach during the early to mid 20th century, pacifism in the 1930s and 1940s, and the civil rights movement up to the late 1960s.

History of Education and the New Curriculum

The development of the curriculum can be traced through student and faculty lecture notes, course announcements, essays and theses, programs of student speaking exhibitions and commencements, copies of old examinations, records of presidents and other administrative officers, and records and reports of the curriculum committee and other administrative committees and task forces. See the online exhibition Education for Everybody: Brown’s Innovation and Influence in Collegiate Education.

Women’s Studies

The history of women at Brown can be studied in documents concerning the admission of women in 1891 and the administration of the Women’s College, named in 1928 Pembroke College, which merged with Brown in 1971. There are also copies of the “Pembroke Record,” the college newspaper (1922–1970); the “Sepiad,” a student literary and news periodical of the women students (1901–1932); the “Brun Mael,” the women’s yearbook (1909–1970); and the “Pembroke Alumna” (1928–1970). There are collections of correspondence of women students, scrapbooks kept by women students full of memorabilia of their college lives, and oral histories on cassette tapes of Pembroke alumnae. “The Research Guide to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives” (1989) provides detailed information about women’s studies resources in the University Archives and other special collections. See also the Pembroke Center‘s website on the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives.

The records of the Pembroke College Athletic and Recreation Association, 1908–1972, document the activities of the association, its relationship with the physical education department, intramural sports at Pembroke College, and some of the athletic interaction between Pembroke College and other women’s colleges in New England.

There are several collections of women, including former Dean of Pembroke College Lida Shaw King and former librarian and bibliographer Margaret B. Stillwell.

An important secondary source that documents the experience of Jewish women at Brown through University Archives records is
“Why not a Jewish Girl?” The Jewish Experience at Pembroke College in Brown University by Karen M. Lamoree (The Jews of Rhode Island edited by George M. Goodwin and Ellen Smith.)

Researchers may listen to an online sample of oral histories by Brown alumnae at Brown Women Speak, a website launched in spring 2012. The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women began collecting oral histories of Brown Alumnae in 1982. The digitization of these interviews has been sponsored by the Pembroke Center Associates, a group of alumnae and friends that supports the Pembroke Center.

Undergraduate Papers

The University Archives offer rich resources for student papers on social and educational history. Examples of papers recently written by students for courses include such subjects as the effect of the Civil War on Brown, the relation of the Women’s College to the University in the 1920s, and 19th century student debating societies.

Beyond the History of Brown

The collections of the University Archives go beyond the history of the University and include historical events such as the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, both World Wars, the civil rights era, and student activism.

• American Civil War:
  The papers of Professor Robert H. George contain his research on Brown University men who were in the war, both as Union and Confederate soldiers. The papers of Alpheus Packard, who served as an assistant surgeon during the war, relate his experiences in several letters to his father.
• World War I:
  The World War I correspondence collection consists of letters from Brown University alumni and students in the armed services, written to persons at the University, recounting their experience overseas. Professor Herbert Eugene Walter’s papers also contain a large collection of correspondence from men serving in the war.
• Civil Rights:
  The records of the Brown-Tougaloo Exchange program document the relationship between Brown University and Tougaloo College, a relationship that began as part of the Mississippi Freedom Movement. The records provide insight into how students from a historically black college and a white elite university handled the changes resulting from the civil rights movement. The papers of alumnus Bob Cohen (class of 1968) contain information on the work of community organizers on behalf of civil rights in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

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