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“We are provoked to tender dreams by a hint”: Alma Routsong’s Historical Imagining

“Betty bought a Ouija board tonight today,” wrote Alma Routsong (1924-1996) in a journal entry dated Thursday, Oct. 28, 1965. Thus began her years-long use of Ouija board seances, all conducted alongside her girlfriend at the time, Elisabeth “Betty” Deran. Alma was a lesbian author, publishing in the late twentieth century under the pseudonym Isabel Miller. She self-published her first lesbian novel, A Place for Us, in 1969. In 1971, the novel was republished by McGraw-Hill as Patience and Sarah.

Beginning on this fateful night in 1965, Alma and Betty held a series of Ouija board sessions with a wide cast of characters, including Bernard DeVoto, Carl Jung, Gertrude Stein, and, figuring most prominently, the historically elusive Mary Ann Willson and Miss Brundage.1

The Historical Record

Alma based Patience and Sarah on the life of American folk painter Mary Ann Willson, who she discovered while on vacation with Betty. Exploring a museum in Cooperstown, New York, Betty noticed a curious label next to Mary Ann Willson’s painting Marimaid. Betty called Alma over to see: the label noted Willson’s “farmerette” companion, whom she lived with in Greene County, New York in the 1820s. Moved by the idea that Willson lived with another woman, Alma and Betty made their way into the adjoining library and found a book that noted Mary Ann Willson’s “romantic attachment” with a Miss Brundage.2

Letter from Raymond Beecher to Alma Routsong, April 9, 1965. Isabel Miller papers, Sophia Smith Collection.

From then on, Alma was fascinated and inspired by the life of Mary Ann Willson. She began to dive into research, attempting to discover more about the painter and her female companion. However, she was dismayed by the lack of information she found as she searched via the Greene County Historical Society and books about American art.3 Even despite her correspondents’ willing assistance, as Raymond Beecher showed in the above letter, there was little information available for Alma to unearth. The historical record had not preserved much about Mary Ann Willson’s life, and even less about that of her companion, for whom Alma could not even find a first name.

Methods of Imagining

So where did Alma get her ideas from? How did she imagine the optimistic queer past that Patience and Sarah represents when she could find such little information on Mary Ann Willson and Miss Brundage?

The answer lies in the Ouija board, the unusual method of imagining that Alma—alongside Betty—landed on when the historical record left her desiring more.

Thursday, Oct. 28, 1965
Betty bought a Ouija board tonight(crossed out), today, which we got around to running rather too close to bedtime, idly. I asked what was Miss Brundage's first name, and it said, "Florence," which seems so completely unlikely—I had been given to understand that Miss Nightingale was the first of that name. As we were discussing whether Florence could be correct, the board said, "I am," and shivers ran down us, goosebumps—"Mary Ann." So I asked if the book is all right, and she said yes.
Journal Entry, October 28, 1965. Isabel Miller papers, Sophia Smith Collection.
Ouija notes, October 28, 1965. Isabel Miller papers, Sophia Smith Collection.

In this first Ouija session, documented by Alma both in her journal and her extensive typed “Ouija notes,” Alma and Betty made contact with Mary Ann Willson, who told them that her companion’s first name was Florence. Though Alma seemed skeptical that Florence could be the right name, given the time period, she also documented the pair’s strong bodily reactions to the experience: “shivers…goosebumps.”

After this first conversation, Alma referred to Miss Brundage as Florence as she and Betty continued the Ouija sessions, inquiring about how Mary Ann and Florence lived and loved: how their neighbors responded to them, the clothes they wore, how they had sex. The details that she generated from the sessions did not just live in her journal and her notes—some of them made their way directly into her writing.

“Something like Firpins”
Ouija notes, November 5, 1965. Isabel Miller papers, Sophia Smith Collection.

In Patience and Sarah, Patience sews an undergarment for Sarah: “I am making firpins for you, which I measured you for from memory–one hand here and the other here is how far? The firpins will be bolder than I and touch you where I have not. They will caress your body all day, as my lucky ambassador—lieutenant—proxy—and at unexpected, inconvenient times you will remember to feel their touch, which is my touch.”4

“Firpins” are not a historical undergarment. In fact, there is no record of the term aside from curious internet users’ queries about what the word used in Patience and Sarah refers to.5 The word was generated from the Ouija board—the session above includes the interaction: “Did you wear underpants? Yes. What did you call them? (We made no note and have forgotten the word she gave—something like Firpins.)” It seems clear that Alma used the Ouija sessions as an authoritative source on the details of early nineteenth-century New England living, as she used this detail, even despite noting that she may have recorded it incorrectly.

The Ouija sessions were not purely fact-finding missions. Alma began her notes on this session with a description of her emotional turmoil at the idea that Mary Ann was bored by the questions she was asking. She was emotionally invested in her relationship with Mary Ann and Florence. And, Betty was too.

Alma and Betty + Mary Ann and Florence

Alma was unable to operate the Ouija board without Betty, so the two conducted all of the sessions together. This frustrated Alma, as she could only contact Mary Ann and Florence if Betty was willing and had enough energy.6 However, together the two formed a strong connection with Alma’s historical inspirations.

As part of their journey, Alma and Betty visited Brundage Hill, which they believed to be the site of Mary Ann and Florence’s farm. Just as Mary Ann had directed them to do in the very first Ouija session, photographs show that they visited Florence’s grave—and brought flowers with them. Mary Ann and Florence became more than elusive historical figures and more than an unusual spiritual connection: Alma and Betty were strongly attached to the relationship they had created together with Mary Ann and Florence.

Patience and Sarah’s happy ending was groundbreaking in the history of lesbian literature. Its possibility was important to lesbian women, used to stories from the mid-twentieth century in which lesbians were punished in the end.7 Alma’s alternative method of imagining allowed her to construct this story of an optimistic queer past, a past that the historical record had neglected. As Alma concluded in the afterword to the novel, “We are provoked to tender dreams by a hint. Any stone from their hill is a crystal ball.”8

Think About This

Why have some histories been recorded while others have not? Whose stories have not been preserved in the historical record?

Do we still have the same need for optimistic queer literature today? For the same or different reasons that queer people needed it when Alma was writing?

Who would you talk to using the Ouija board? Whose story needs to be told today?

Further Reading

Kumbier, Alana. “Inventing History: The Watermelon Woman and Archive Activism.” In Ephemeral Material: Queering the Archive, 51-73. Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2014.

In this chapter, Kumbier discusses Cheryl Dunye’s film The Watermelon Woman, focusing on Dunye’s use of alternative forms of historical evidence to counteract a lack of information about marginalized groups in the historical record. Kumbier examines the power archives and libraries have in deciding what histories are preserved and accessible, and how alternative or counter-histories might be used to combat those systems. It is useful to consider Routsong’s work on Patience and Sarah alongside Dunye’s work on The Watermelon Woman to think about how they creatively imagined pasts that were not recorded.

Wavle, Elizabeth M. “Isabel Miller, pseud. (1924- ).” In Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, edited by Sandra Pollack and Denise D. Knight, 354-360. 1993.

This entry provides brief biographical information on Routsong, including her childhood, marriage and children, and writing career. It also includes an overview of her major works and responses to her work. Wavle reads Patience and Sarah as resistance against the idea of lesbianism as “a sickness or deviance.” There has been no extensive writing on Routsong’s biography, but this source is a helpful overview for understanding the trajectory of her life.

Zimmerman, Bonnie. The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian Fiction 1969-1989. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.

Zimmerman narrates a story about lesbian literary history beginning in 1969, the year that Routsong first self-published Patience and Sarah as A Place for Us. Scholarship on twentieth-century lesbian literature often places Patience and Sarah at a turning point when lesbian literature began to provide hopeful endings. Zimmerman positions Routsong as the author who began creating, “a literature that expressed the new truths and visions we were creating for ourselves” in the 1960s and 1970s, as opposed to the “dreary portrayals of self-hating ‘inverts’” (like The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall) that were common in the early 1970s (xi). 

Further Research

For Alma and Betty’s published reflections on the writing process for Patience and Sarah, see:

Deran, Elisabeth. “Patience & Sarah Come to Life.” Patience and Sarah, 207-214. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005. 

Katz, Jonathan Ned. “1962-1972: Alma Routsong, Writing and Publishing Patience and Sarah, ‘I Felt I Had Found My People.’” In Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary, 433-443. Meridian, 1992.

Archival Collections

Isabel Miller papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College Special Collections

Elisabeth Deran papers, University of Delaware Special Collections

Footnotes

Header image: Patience and Sarah draft sketch. Isabel Miller papers, Box 11, Sophia Smith Collection, SSC-MS-00572, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts,

  1. Ouija notes. Isabel Miller papers, Box 21, Sophia Smith Collection, SSC-MS-00572, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. ↩︎
  2. Jonathan Ned Katz, “1962-1972: Alma Routsong, Writing and Publishing Patience and Sarah, ‘I Felt I Had Found My People,’” in Gay American History : Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.: A Documentary, (Meridian, 1992), 434. Originally published 1976. ↩︎
  3. Folder of research on Mary Ann Willson. Isabel Miller papers, Box 5. ↩︎
  4. Isabel Miller, Patience and Sarah, (Fawcett Crest, 1972), p. 107. ↩︎
  5. baronnessv (screen name), “Costume Question, Forwarded for a Friend,” LiveJournal, October 6, 2009, baronessv.livejournal.com/463519.html. ↩︎
  6. Ouija notes, Oct.31, after supper. Isabel Miller papers, Box 21. ↩︎
  7.  Bonnie Zimmerman, The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian Fiction 1969-1989, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), xi. ↩︎
  8. Miller, Patience and Sarah, p. 192. ↩︎

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Across the Mill River

In July 1855, a group of surveyors scouting locations for the third Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane visited Northampton, Massachusetts. They noted that “Northampton presents facilities in point of salubrity of climate, pure water, ease of access and a central location not to be surpassed.”1 Less than a year later, on February 26, 1856, construction began on what was originally named the Northampton Lunatic Asylum.2 It was built on the west side of the Mill River; just under twenty years later, Smith College was first built across the banks. By the early 20th century, the name had changed to the Northampton State Hospital, which it remained. The hospital was in operation until 1993, at which point all remaining patients had been reassigned, and the buildings were abandoned.3


While today, there is little physical trace of the hospital on the Smith College campus, this was not always the case. Until the early 2000s, when the hospital ruins were torn down, students at Smith would have been able to see the main hospital building from where it stood across the Mill River. Furthermore, there is a long history of interactions between the two institutions, in terms of education, work, and land, as well as cultural and societal conventions. In this exhibit, I hope to track some of these interactions and overlapping history, to explore what these two institutions meant to each other, and how the Northampton State Hospital impacted life at Smith and vice versa.


“Smith College and the hospital shared Paradise Pond between them, which blurred the edges of the two institutions. When the sun went down, the hospital could be seen from the Smith College Campus, clearly silhouetted against the sky.”4

Shared Land

As its student population grew in the early 20th century, the Trustees of Smith College became interested in increasing expansion. In 1920, President Neilson began making inquiries about buying the land from the Northampton State Hospital that sat on the other side of the Mill River. In 1922, a bill was approved by the Commissioner of Mental Diseases to allow Smith College to buy this land for about $50,000 – which would amount to just under one million dollars today. Over the next few years, the college would develop this land into the current athletics fields.5 The campus maps below show the changing ownership and use of the grounds between 1915 and 1933.
While the athletics fields became officially owned by Smith College at this point, in the decades following students were still allowed access to other parts of the Northampton State Hospital grounds for various activities, including skiing and sledding. Even now, one of the most popular sledding hills in Northampton is what’s still known as Hospital Hill, and is former Northampton State Hospital land.


  • As a student at Smith now, is the history of Hospital Hill discussed? What of this history is generally known today?

Classes and Lectures

Another way that Smith college students and faculty interacted more closely with not only the hospital land but the patients and staff living and working there was through classes and lectures. Throughout much of the first half of the 20th century, Smith classes – particularly psychology classes and classes at the School for Social Work – visited the hospital to learn by observing its patients and practices. In 1919, the first year that the School for Social Work was in operation, the then-Superintendent of the Northampton State Hospital, Dr. John A. Houston, delivered lectures and clinics to students that directly involved individual patients.6 
The practice of classes visiting the hospital continued at least through the 1930s, as can be seen by the above syllabus from Professor William Sentam Taylor’s class on Abnormal Psychology, which showed that he and his students visited the hospital on April 18, 1935, though students had an option to do an extended reading if they chose not to come to the visit.7 While it’s clear that the hospital administration supported these visits, this was not true of everyone. Sarah Nelson Ward wrote to President Neilson in 1933 after she was at the hospital while students visited, and objected to the practice. Importantly, she noted that it wasn’t the attitude or the actions of the students that were a problem, but that it distracted from the actual goal of the hospital by pulling doctors and nurses away from their work and that the practice itself was disrespectful to the patients.8 

“It often looks as though the general opinion throughout State Hospitals is that patients have no feelings… We all know that State Hospitals are made and supported for the patients.”

Sarah Nelson Ward to President Neilson, 1933.

Despite Ward’s request, there is no record of Neilson’s response to her objections. Based on the dates of this letter and of Taylor’s syllabus, it’s clear that these visits continued in the years after she wrote to Neilson.

  • The photograph of Dr. Houston was taken as a part of promotional material for the newly-created School for Social Work. How might a photo like this be seen today, and do you think it would have the same effect as promotional material as it did in the past?
  • Some of Professor Taylor’s publications during this time focused on “Mental Hygiene,” which is an indicator of eugenic thinking. What might this context show about the focus of his class and the perspective he taught about patients at the hospital?
  • How would you address or respond to Sarah Nelson Ward’s concerns had you received this letter?

Nine College Volunteer Program

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, students from many of the surrounding colleges volunteered at the Northampton State Hospital as a part of the Nine College Hospital Volunteer Program. Beginning volunteers worked in the Ward Activity Program, under supervision, with a focus on “re-socialization” and “re-motivation” for patients, and also received an intensive orientation. More experienced volunteers could work in a variety of positions, including being a Case Aide for an individual patient, or working on programs in Music, Arts and Crafts, or Recreation. This program appears to have been very well received by both Smith and the hospital, according to letters exchanged between President Mendenhall and various directors and supervisors of the program at the hospital, and was nominated for the Lane Bryant Award in 1966. Mendenhall wrote that he saw the program as an important element of connection between the college and the wider Northampton community, and as a part of a larger movement of programs designed to bring Smith students in contact with other local groups.9

“I’m delighted to write in support of what has proved to be an extraordinarily exciting and rewarding venture for both parties, the undergraduates and the patients in the hospital.”

President Mendenhall to Dana Fisher, 1967

Various Smith students took on leadership roles throughout the process, and incorporated their own passions, such as sophomore Susan Lowry who in 1967 proposed bringing dance therapy to her volunteer work, though her program shifted according to the needs of the hospital patients. The same year, in 1967, around 76 Smithies were involved in the program. 
The 1965-66 constitution for the volunteer group also emphasized the goal of re-motivation for patients, as well as the opportunities for community engagement. While we don’t have accounts of patients’ experiences with this program – which would be vital to a fuller analysis of these events – students and hospital workers viewed it as a positive exchange between the two institutions.

  • What programs would you be interested in being a part of if you were involved in the Nine College Volunteer Program?
  • What agency do you see this program and interaction providing for patients at the hospital? What agency for students?

Further Research

For more background on the history of Northampton State Hospital, including oral histories surrounding its deinstitutionalization: Northampton State Hospital

Anna S. Haber created a memorial project for the hospital prior to its demolition in 2006, which included hearing from former patients: Habeas Corpus – by Anna Schuleit Haber, at Northampton State Hospital, The Moth | Stories | The Magnificat.

Archival Collections:

Office of the President Records: President Neilson, President Mendenhall, President Conway

Smith School for Social Work Records: Photographs, 1919-2002

Secondary Sources

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. “Smith College and Changing Conceptions of Educated Women.” In Five Colleges: Five Histories, edited by Ronald Story. Five Colleges, Inc., 1992.
Horowitz explores the founding of Smith College, with a focus on how its design was meant to inform the lives of its students within Smith and afterwards. She also places Smith’s design in context with that of Vassar and Mount Holyoke, which helps to understand the overarching relationships between Historically Women’s Colleges and mental institutions, particularly in terms of surveillance and patriarchal ideals.

Upshur, Carole C, Paul R Benson, and Elizabeth Clemens. “Closing State Mental Hospitals in Massachusetts: Policy, Process, and Impact.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 20, no. 2 (1997).
This paper provides an important overview of the impacts of the closing of multiple Massachusetts State Hospitals in the second half of the 20th century, including the Northampton State Hospital. The hospital being shut down was a complicated and ongoing process, and this article helps to place it in context with the wider view of mental institutions in the state and in the country.

Yanni, Carla. The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States. NED-New edition, University of Minnesota Press, 2007. 
Yanni analyzes the architecture and the history of design of mental institutions within the United States. Of particular interest are the chapters on the Kirkbride plan, which is the style that the Northampton State Hospital was built under, and the chapter on the Cottage Plan, which inspired Smith’s design and early house system. This book provides important background information for the ways in which institutional design imparts the values of their founders, even as the institutions themselves evolve.

*Note: all highlighted sections of documents were added to photographs by me for clarity, and are not a part of the original item.

Works Cited

  1. Daily Hampshire Gazette, July 17, 1855. ↩︎
  2. Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 26, 1856. ↩︎
  3. “A Brief History of Northampton State Hospital,” Northampton State Hospital, https://northamptonstatehospital.org/. ↩︎
  4. J. Michael Moore and Anna S. Haber, Northampton State Hospital (Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 85. ↩︎
  5. Correspondence on sale of hospital land. The Office of President William Allan Neilson files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. ↩︎
  6. F. Stuart Chapin. The Smith College Training School for Social Work. May 1919. ↩︎
  7. Psychology 342 syllabus. Department of Psychology records, College Archives, CA-MS-00076, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. ↩︎
  8. Letter from Sarah Nelson Ward to President Neilson. The Office of President William Allan Neilson files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00013, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. ↩︎
  9. Correspondence and documents on Nine College Volunteer Program. Office of the President Thomas Corwin Mendenhall Files, Smith College Archives, CA-MS-00032, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts. ↩︎
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Smith College’s Response to World War II

“Do not think of colleges as separated from the country’s war program… While you are here, there is much that you can do. Don your blue jeans, roll up your sleeves, and come out and pitch hay or harvest apples; or roll bandages for the Red Cross; or sell war stamps.”

Smith College Freshman Handbook, 1942

“The great majority of your fellow countrymen and countrywomen are devoting their whole energies to the business of war. You will owe a debt to those who are fighting and working for you while you are continuing undisturbed your normal course of education here.”

-Smith College President Herbert Davis, Smith College Freshman Handbook, 1944, pp. 13

SMITH AT WAR

In April 1946, just seven months after the end of the Second World War, Smith College’s Committee on Post-War Planning told the faculty that “the impact of the war has been very much slighter on the women’s colleges than upon the men’s.” During the war, many liberal-arts colleges took a vocational turn: they transformed their curricula to better prepare their students to join the war effort after graduation. Despite the best efforts of Smith College during and after the war to maintain their liberal-arts status, the college had been deeply impacted by the war. In response to the national emergency, Smith created a minor in War, secretly trained students in cryptanalysis,1 and accelerated graduations so that students could serve their country. Just as the lives of millions of American women were transformed by the dramatic increase in job opportunities and economic independence, so too was the idyllic campus in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Above: letters from the U.S. Navy, regarding the recruiting of Smith students for cryptanalysis work. Source: Box 462, Folder 25, Office of the President Herbert John Davis Files, Sophia Smith Collection.

ACCELERATED GRADUATION

In order to accommodate the “national necessity” for women in “work of the war” (“for defense, for industry, education, and… many other fields”), Smith College adopted an acceleration program between 1943–1946. The curriculum reflected the goal of the program: the 1943 summer session focused on “Techniques for Modern Civilization” (“Scientific Training,” “Training in Modern Languages,” and “Other Technical Training”) as well as “Studies in Modern Civilization and Its Background.” Accelerated students spent two summers at Smith following their sophomore and junior years, taking courses in twelve-week summer sessions. Administration worried that students would not be able to handle the intensive workload and therefore only allowed high-performing students to participate in the acceleration program. 

THE WAR MINOR…?!

The stated purpose of the War Minor was “to give students training which may be used… in connection with the present national emergency.” The War Minor is an early example of an interdisciplinary program at Smith College, as most courses that counted toward the minor were offered within other departments. During the summer sessions, the college offered special courses designed for students minoring in War. In the summer sessions between 1943–1944, these included: 

  • Elementary Drafting. Use of instruments; geometric construction; lettering; principles of blueprint reading, office procedure, orthographic projection.
  • Advanced Drafting. Isometric, perspective and oblique projection. Shop practices.
  • Special Projects in Writing: Radio and Journalism. A Study of the technique of writing for radio, with some study of journalistic practice.
  • Map Making: Elements of map surveying, map drafting, cartographic editing, photographic and lithographic reproduction of maps. Practice in map reading, map manuscript compilation, and simple map drafting. Characteristics of civilian and military maps.

Similar courses were offered throughout the normal academic year under the Art, Geology, and Physics departments. In order to maintain a semblance of liberal-arts education, Smith did not allow students to count more than six semester hours of War Minor courses for academic credit. 

Other vocational summer courses included aviation, typing, personnel, nurses aide, typing, and stenography. The latter two courses advantaged graduates seeking secretarial work. Even students who did not minor in War could prepare themselves for post-graduate employment through courses which could “undoubtedly be made useful in connection with the war effort: e.g., Photography, Secondary School Teaching, Recreational Leadership, etc.”

The war did not only impact the course offerings, but also student interest. In 1943, The New York Times reported a rapid rise in Smithies pursuing STEM courses: a 33% rise in mathematics course enrollments, 68% rise in physics course enrollments, and a 70% rise in statistics course enrollments.2

An informational pamphlet from September, 1942 explained that “War Minors are not primarily designed for students majoring in science, mathematics, economics, or in a modern foreign language. Such students are already in effect taking War Majors.” This is not to say that all Zoology majors, for example, were trained in the art of war. Rather, this aside indicates the breadth of jobs available to women during the War. The drafting of many young men into overseas military work—which was not permitted to women—combined with the creation of many new jobs in government and industry meant that opportunities were plentiful for college-educated women.

HOW ELSE DID SMITHIES AID THE WAR EFFORT? 

During the war years, a variety of extracurricular activities popped up for students interested in contributing to the war effort. As a Smith student in 1943, you could:

  • Work on a farm over the summer in various parts of New England, including Lubec, ME; Prout’s Neck, ME; and Ashland, MA.
  • Serve as air raid warden or on the first aid squad for your house.
  • Knit and roll bandages for the Red Cross.
  • Host and entertain at the Smith Door Canteen, a social club for  servicemen stationed in western Massachusetts.
  • Take a course hosted by the Student Committee for Defense and Reconstruction (SCDR), on topics like First Aid, Home Nursing, Nutrition, Air Raid Precautions, Recreational Leadership, Motor Transport, Mobile Canteen, Staff Assistants, Nurse’s Aid, Child Care, Red Cross Canteen, Home Mechanics, Children’s Games, Junior Hostessing, Stretcher Bearing, and Fire Fighting.
  • Join the newly-founded National Affairs Club to discuss pressing domestic issues.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. How did the Second World War expand vocational opportunities for college-educated women? In what ways did women remain limited by their gender?
  2. How did Smith College balance its responsibility to women’s education with the demands of the United States government and international crisis?
  3. Consider the relationship between Smith College (administration and students) and the American military today. What precedents were set by World War II?

FOOTNOTES

  1. For further information on the 11,000 female code-breakers—many of whom were included recruits from Smith and other historically women’s colleges—check out Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II by Liza Mundy (2017). This popular history book received favorable reviews from literary critics (The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews) as well as U.S. military publications (American Intelligence Journal, The Cyber Defense Review). ↩︎
  2. Dorn, Charles. “‘A Woman’s World’: The University of California, Berkeley, during the Second World War.” History of Education Quarterly 48, no. 4 (2008): 540. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20462258. This journal article provides context about the lives of college women at co-ed institutions, as well as some fascinating statistics about changes at Smith during the war. ↩︎

Other Smithies have written the following articles about the college’s involvement in World War II for the Smith Alumni Quarterly, Summer 2019 edition: “When We Went to War: Smith’s Hidden Weapon” by Karen Pell ’74 and “Learning to ‘Be Navy’” by Alex Asal ’16.