Curriculum – Page 2 – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Orient: Focus on Fine Arts and Letters to the Editor

After admitting its first female students in the fall of 1971, Bowdoin began to reassess the demands on departments, courses, and/or facilities that women’s presence on campus introduced. Specifically, Bowdoin sought to revamp its art facilities and to offer more arts and humanities classes. Faced with new or better course options within the realm of painting or dance, students responded in a variety of ways. The two Orient articles presented here, (Documents SW, 33.1, 33.2) illustrate how some students, e.g., Eric Von Der Luft, felt the “fine arts…are more comparable to football than to scholarly endeavor,” while others, e.g. Cathy Steiner and Paul Smith, assert that the fine arts are a crucial component to higher education, especially because they are “very oriented toward creativity, the recognition of aesthetic orders, and personal growth.”

As the opinions put forth in these Orient articles highlight, Bowdoin students, male and female alike, had much to say about the delineation of academics and academic credit, and how the College’s curriculum should meet them. With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, we can definitively say that despite his strong and publicized opinion, Von Der Luft’s argument did not win out: starting in 1973 and continuing until the present day, fine arts courses have become an integral part of Bowdoin’s curriculum.

Faculty Focus Group

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 interactions, click on this audio link here and/or view these selected video clips.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Interview with Professor Helen Cafferty by K. Skyler Walley ’12

Finding Her Way Through the Bowdoin Professorial Ranks: A Discussion with Helen Cafferty

As one of the first female professors hired at Bowdoin during its transition to coeducation, and the first female professor to pass through all the ranks, from assistant to associate to full professor, Helen Cafferty has had a remarkable experience as a Bowdoin faculty member. To hear about how she established herself in the German Department, introduced unofficial women’s studies courses, and navigated the still predominantly male Bowdoin campus, listen to the audio below.

Audio: click below to begin listening

Intriguing Pieces:

Time: 00:02:20

Quotation: [In reference to applying to be a professor] “So when it came to Bowdoin, I had a long series of hour interviews with everyone on the faculty committee and they were very cavalier and gracious, and perhaps just a touch patronizing, but with the best motivation I think…”

Time: 00:22:45

Quotation: [In reference to recounting memorable early experiences as a professor] “One time, I think this was in the third year of German language class, I did something differently, I basically lectured in German and wrote on the board a lot…And so I talked about existentialism in German literature in German…and one of the students came up afterwards and said, “Finally you are getting the hang of what it means to be a teacher at Bowdoin!”

Time: 00:39:26

Quotation: [In reference to providing classes, although unofficial at the time, concentrating on women] “I did teach, co-teach, a course on literature and women. And this was a representation of women as well as the cultural status of women, sociological status of women, as in the context of the literature…and then a course on history of German literature with a focus on women…that was very satisfying, these early attempts to have a presence…”

Citation: I, Skyler Walley, interviewed Professor Helen Cafferty on Friday, October 21, 2011, in room 403 of Adams Hall at Bowdoin College. We discussed Professor Cafferty’s experience at Bowdoin as a faculty member, and in particular, as one of the first female faculty members present during Bowdoin’s transition to coeducation.