University of Delaware Women's Studies oral history collection

In 2011, the University of Delaware Department of Women and Gender Studies initiated the project Women at the Center, created to document the early history of the creation of Women’s Studies program at the university. This project was created to provide essential documentation for situating the University of Delaware’s leadership in the academic feminist movement in the United States. The University of Delaware’s Women’s Studies Interdisciplinary Program was one of the first programs of its kind in the United States. It was formalized in 1973, shortly after the first women’s studies interdisciplinary programs developed in New York and California in 1970. Several nationally renowned scholars who helped shape the field of women’s studies in the 1970s led UD's program in the early years. The University of Delaware was a creative center for the development of women’s studies as a discipline, due to a critical mass of feminist scholars associated with the emerging program. Faculty collaboration and the newly designed classes made the University of Delaware a center of research and teaching.

Several of these key scholars started their careers at the University of Delaware. They include Akasha (Gloria) Hull, who pioneered research in African American women's literature, and worked to recover the history of African American writers in Delaware; Sandra G. Harding, who was and continues to be a central figure in bringing feminist perspectives to the study of science; Bonnie Kime Scott, a key figure in the study of feminist perspectives in Irish and British literature, especially the work of James Joyce; Margaret L. Anderson, whose work in the sociology of gender is nationally renowned and whose book Thinking about women and rethinking sociology is an important text in the field; Barbara Kelly, who promoted gender equity in women's sports; and Barbara Timms Gates, a central figure in bringing eco-feminist perspectives to the study of women's writing, especially the writing of female naturalists.

The Women at the Center project also includes interviews with several key administrators and staff who were essential to the foundation of Women’s Studies, such as Mae Riedy Carter, chair in the early 1970s of both the Commission on the Status of Women as well as the Women’s Studies Committee, which helped establish the earliest Women’s Studies classes on campus. In addition to their research, these scholars and administrators worked to establish the foundation on which the current Women’s Studies Department was built. The project included interviewing key actors (faculty, administrators, and staff) in the formation of the Women’s Studies Interdisciplinary Program, as it was first known, at the University of Delaware. Professor Marie Laberge, faculty in the Department of Women’s Studies and an expert in oral history data collection and analysis, collected these stories and conducted archival research at the University of Delaware Library. Professor Laberge collected both the historical memory and actual historical record of this history. This initial effort was supplemented by the WOMS 2012 Capstone graduate class in feminist oral history.

The project gathered essential primary sources on the history and origins of the 20th century academic feminist movement, otherwise unavailable to the University of Delaware community and the United States at large. The project also recorded the significant role that the faculty, administrators and staff played in the development of Women’s Studies.

Historical information provided by the donor.