Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin
A Class Project of GWS 280 - Fall 2011
This discussion brought together four Bowdoin women who all played important roles in establishing Bowdoin’s still vibrant and active Women’s Resource Center. Jan Brackett and Bridget Spaeth ’86 each served as directors for the WRC, and Linda Nelson ’83 and Laura Barnard ’83 were early members of the Women’s Resource Center Collective that founded the WRC [...]
Several women from the first coeducational classes at Bowdoin now serve on the Board of Trustees. In a focus group, trustees Michele Cyr ’76, Ellen Shuman ’76, Ann Kenyon ’79, and Debbie Barker ’80 discussed their experiences as students in the early years of coeducation at the College, and as alumnae with strong attachments to [...]
This discussion involved four professors who arrived on Bowdoin’s campus either shortly before or after the College began admitting female students in 1971. If you are interested in hearing how Professors Vail, Cafferty, Cerf, and Potholm recount their experiences of Bowdoin’s transition to coeducation with regard to classroom dynamics, course content, student-professor relations, and faculty/departmental [...]
This discussion brought together three women of the first two classes of coeducation at Bowdoin. These women, Elissa [Liddy] Berry (’75), Barney Geller (’75), and Anne Ireland (’76), describe their social experience during their four years at Bowdoin. These women did experience hostility from some students on campus due to their gender, but the stories [...]
For this discussion, three women who were among the first female athletes at Bowdoin came together to share their stories. Click the audio links below to listen to Karen Brodie Doyle, ’79 (field hockey, diving, lacrosse), Sally Clayton Caras, ’78 (field hockey and lacrosse), and Ruth Spire Small, ’77 (lacrosse and swimming), discuss their experiences [...]
