About
A digital collection of historical narratives of the life of Brown – many of which were produced by student researchers for English Non-Fiction Senior Lecturer Elizabeth Taylor’s “Narrative History” course – Chronicles of Brunonia are archival-based non-fiction pieces about Brown’s buried history, quirky traditions, and unsavory moments.
Notable Entries Include:
- “328 headlines and a protest,” by Jennifer Leighty. Student activists win a referendum to have Health Services provide cyanide pills in the case of a nuclear attack during the Cold War.
- “The dear old well: the water procession of 1868,” by Rebecca Jacobson. After a university official refused to replace a bucket in the Hope Street well, Brown students engaged in their first official protest to improve their living conditions on campus.
- “Ivy League bunnies: when Playboy came to town,” by Natalie Villacorta. Recounting Playboy Magazine’s brief visit to Brown’s campus in the 1970s, this piece revisits the controversy of the spread, featuring five women students, and recounts opposing conceptions of “womanhood” prevailing at the time.
- “The dismantling of Nathaniel Von Wallenstein Weinstein,” by Sarah LaBrie. Through clerical errors, Nathaniel Von Wallenstein Weinstein was admitted to Brown, which he attended and notes thoroughly shaped his writing career and influential literary persona, Nathanael West.
- “The Curricular Revolution,” by Katie Kinsey. The worst-known, best-known story on Brown’s campus, Kinsey traces the conceptualization of the New Curriculum and its advent by Ira Magaziner in the 1970s.