Browse Exhibits (12 total)

This exhibit examines the push for coeducation and coed dormitories on college campuses in mid-century America. The sources displayed engage with popular depictions of coed living, student, alumni, and administrative opinion on the matter, as well as the lasting legacies of the coed movement. This exhibit aims to convey an understanding of the general concerns that accompanied switches to coed classes and dorms, from the value of homosociality to women’s education and students’ sexual promiscuity. It also prompts viewers, through engaging with the historical sources, to consider how modern attitudes have changed from those expressed during the height of the coed movement, or whether many of the same concerns still exist today.

This exhibit explores the experience and treatment of women's mental illness in the 19th century. Medical papers and official manuscripts offer insight into the broader culture at the time, while writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin seek to illustrate the counterculture of strong female voices. This exhibit seeks to show two experiences: women whose real illness was ignored, such as Gilman and other victims of the rest cure, and women whose illness was invented as a form of abuse, documented by women such as Lydia B. Denny. Furthermore, I hope to illustrate the ways in which these practices were ingrained into the culture, only to be challenged by women such as Gilman and Chopin who had the ability to fight back.