Reading List

This project was initiated by Emma Kioko, Bryn Mawr Class of 2015, in part inspired by UNC Chapel Hill’s “Black and Blue” College Tour designed by Dr. Tim McMillan, who provided us with the following resources to get started:

The Black at Bryn Mawr blog cites a number of archival holdings located at Bryn Mawr Special Collections. Other sources of interest on the history of the College and its environs include:

For further reading on the topics of race and higher education, we suggest the following:

Colleges and universities, we argue, are sites of history and memory. We are inspired by other institutions of higher education in the U.S. pursuing projects that uncover invisible histories of slavery and colonialism:

We are also interested in conversations about collecting and interpreting student activism through college archives:

  • Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, “Filling in the Gaps: Using Outreach Efforts to Acquire Documentation on the Black Campus Movement, 1965-1972,” Archival Issues(2014): 27-42. [PDF]
  • Jarrett Drake, “Announcing ASAP: Archiving Student Activism at Princeton” (2015)
  • Ellen D. Swain, “An Activist Approach to the Collection and Use of Student Documents in the University Archives,” Journal of Archival Organization 2 (2004): 39-53.
  • Jessica L. Wagner and Debbi A. Smith, “Students as Donors to University Archives: A Study of Student Perceptions with Recommendations,” The American Archivist 75 (2012): 538-566.

In preparation for the March 2016 NCPH working group meeting, “Campus History as Public History,” we have collected similar articles and conversations under the hashtag #campushistories and made a Storify.

This list is a work-in-progress. Suggestions? Additions? Leave a comment below.

updated March 2016

4 thoughts on “Reading List

  1. I suggest you contact “The Equal Justice Initiatve” and their publications on Lynching in America- The Legacy of Terror; and Slavery in America; Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy”; and Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.”

    • These are terrific suggestions, thank you – every college student should be reading The New Jim Crow! –MM

  2. Congratulations on a wonderful project. Inspired by the Brown Slavery and Justice Project, I have long been interested in claiming colleges and universities as historic sites of conscience, adapting the framework of the international consortium, Sites of Conscience. I’ll be using your resource and its links in my class here at the University of Michigan, “What College Means in America.” Thank you for your work.

    • Julie, thank you for your kind words! We are excited to learn about a number of classes and teachers introducing our project in their classroom, and I’d love to hear more.
      — Monica Mercado

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