Speaking 61 years after graduating from Pembroke College, Mary Jane Mikuriya, class of 1956, shares an exceptionally rich account of her experience as an American student and woman of Japanese and Czechoslovakian descent in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

This interview with members of the Brown University class of 1987 encapsulates the undergraduate experiences of Carol M. Snow, Kim S. Reuben, Mary Lou Jepsen, Valerie T. Tutson, Trinita E. Brown, Baishali Rinku Sen, Stephanie L. Grace, Rebecca M. Zeigler, and Pamela D. Gerrol, at their 25th reunion.

This interview with members of the Brown University class of 1993 documents the undergraduate experiences of Kenya F.

Alice Mary Clark begins her interview by briefly describing her childhood on Charlesfield Street in Providence, Rhode Island. There is some trouble with the recording and Clark picks up with an anecdote of a post-graduation opportunity in the speech department with Sock and Buskin director, Janice Vanderwater. She explains her love of speech and elocution, and briefly mentions one year of studies at Columbia University and Salve Regina.

In the first part of the interview, Anna Peña Hass discusses early life on her family’s farm and the decision to attend Pembroke despite wanting to get married and become a nurse. Hass describes the courses she took in her two years at Pembroke and some of the formative people she met during that time. In the second part of the interview, Hass elucidates the Brown dress code and describes political events, life in Cuba, and her arrest. 

In this interview, Beatrice McGeoch, Brown University class of 1997, shares her thoughts on education, work, and housing, in the times of COVID-19.

In these two interviews, Bernadette Aulestia, Brown University class of 1994, discusses her time at Brown, her career path, and her family’s experience with the COVID-19 global pandemic.

In this interview, Charlotte Lowney, looking back on a 40-year career with Pembroke College and Brown University, details her upward trajectory through the ranks of the institution’s administration, beginning with her position as the secretary to Brown President Henry Merrit Wriston. In 1962, she became the director of career placement at Brown, during both an exciting and tumultuous period on the Pembroke-Brown campus.

In this interview, Christina Smith, Associate Director for Undergraduate STEM Development at the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning at Brown University, shares her experiences as a scholar and member of Navajo Nation during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

In Part 1 of this interview, Elizabeth Branch Jackson begins by talking about her high-achieving family. Educated at Howard Dental School, her father was one of only two Black dentists in Providence at that time. He was also active in the NAACP and a variety of community programs, pushing the same expectations he had for himself onto his daughter. Jackson discusses the inevitability of pursuing a Ph.D., her lack of choice in choosing Pembroke, and being a highly visible token among her classmates.

In this interview, Feven Teklu, Senior Leadership Giving Officer in the Office of Advancement at Brown University, discusses her experiences as a woman of color and mother during the COVID-19 global pandemic and in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Teklu begins by sharing her personal background and talking about her childhood in Ukraine and Ethiopia; her education at Milton Hershey School in Pennsylvania; and her dream to live and work in New York City.

In Part 1 of her interview, Galia Siegel speaks about her work with Project Birth – an advocacy, service, and educational program for pregnant and parenting teens in South Providence, and founding its corollary, Peer Sister, which matched women in Project Birth with women at Brown who would tutor them.

In Part 2, Siegel discusses her belief that the general atmosphere at Brown turned her into an activist. She then speaks of her family life, cultural expectations, and going off to college.

Hilary Berger Ross begins Part 1 of her 1988 interview by discussing her search for community at Pembroke College, and speaks about her experience as a city girl – a female day student who attended Pembroke but did not live on campus. She remembers Pembroke rules and studying women in Shakespeare. She explains that the birth of her first child galvanized her to feminism and specifically women’s health issues. For her, childbirth should be entirely in the hands of the woman who gives birth and her loved one.

In this interview, Ingrid Ellen Winther begins by discussing her childhood and early education. She reflects on her memories of the first day at Pembroke College, her active social life, and her academics, pausing to note the lack of female role models at Pembroke. She felt that women were being educated to be good mothers and good wives, and while women felt that they could work and get a decent job, they were ultimately going to be married and be homemakers.

In this interview,  Jennifer Currier, former Publications and Programs Coordinator for the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Department at Brown University, discusses her experiences leading up to and participating in one of the Black Lives Matter protests in Providence, Rhode Island, following the murder of George Floyd.

In her second interview, Johanna Fernández, Brown University class of 1993, shares her experiences as a professor and radio show host in New York City during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

In this interview, Justice Gaines, Brown University class of 2016, discusses her undergraduate career at Brown and highlights her activism on campus.

Gaines begins by sharing some background on her high school experiences participating in theatre of the oppressed and JROTC in New Jersey. She explains choosing to attend Brown on the recommendation of her mother and describes how she found her friend groups on campus. She mentions participating in Gravediggers Poetry Collective and the Third World Center, now the Brown Center for Students of Color.

In her second interview recorded during the 2018 Black Alumni Reunion, Karen E. McLaurin, class of 1973, briefly recounts highlights of her time at Brown University. To begin, McLaurin mentions growing up in Roxbury and then Rockland, Massachusetts, attending public school through the seventh grade, and attending Notre Dame Academy. She notes her volunteerism with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality CORE, and the Black Panther Party of Boston. 

On the occasion of her 50th Reunion, Katharine Curtis Pierce looks back on the highlights of her time at Pembroke College. She begins by explaining her expectations for Pembroke and the “finishing school for Episcopal girls” that she found in its stead. Pierce talks about dorm life, her dissatisfaction with that atmosphere, her time pursuing social work, as well as her work resettling refugees in Vietnam at the National Council of Churches.

In this interview, Kathy Le, Brown University class of 1997, shares stories about her family’s emigration from Vietnam to the United States, and also details memories of her time at Brown.

This interview captures the oral history of Lillian Y. Lim, Brown University class of 1973 and the first Filipina American Judge in the United States.

In Part 1 of this interview, Lucile K. Wawzonek discusses changing attitudes towards formal gender divisions on campus during the Pembroke-Brown merger. She begins by reflecting on the regulations at Brown in the late 1960s, including the male caller system and curfews. She speaks on the housing lottery and the advent of coed dorms, which she feels led to a looser social structure, especially in terms of dating.

In this interview, Lynn Nottage, Pulitzer-prize winning playwright and Brown University class of 1986, and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber, Brown University class of 2020, discuss their experiences at Brown, living through the COVID-19 global pandemic, and processing the death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Marjorie Alice Jones speaks as a member of the silent generation and considers the busy, active life she’s lead despite the fact that nobody expected anything from the women of her generation. She begins Part 1 of her interview by discussing her family background and reasons for attending Pembroke College. She describes her experience as a transfer student and speaks on professors and academics, considering the closed attitude towards women in academia.

In Part 1 of this interview, Martha Gardner discusses the women's march and speakout held in the spring of 1985. She describes fraternity activities and campus conditions that prompted female students to plan a day of events that addressed sexual violence, gender discrimination, and homophobia at Brown.  

In Part 2, Gardner  focuses on the aftermath of the 1985 women's march and speakout. She discusses her involvement with the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, gay and lesbian outreach and activism on campus, and her work as a Woman's Peer Counselor.  

In the first part of her 1987 interview, Martha Alice Ingham Dickie discusses her family background, her life at Brown, and her social work during her time at Northwestern. Also in tracks 1 and 2, Dickie reflects on meeting her husband, Waitstill Sharp, and starting a family and ministry together while taking classes at Radcliffe at Harvard.

Miriam Dale Pichey’s interview is an energetic insight into the politics of student life at Brown University in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She describes both the campus atmosphere of gendered social rules and struggling for equal representation after the Pembroke-Brown merger, the founding of Women of Brown United, and the broader political environment of student activism during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movement.

In this interview, Phyllis A. Kollmer discusses the general course requirements for obtaining a degree from Pembroke College in Brown University as well as some of her favorite courses, including Ancient History, Classical History, and Economics. She mentions her musical contributions to the Chattertocks and the social dynamics of coeducational courses. Additionally, Kollmer details the different rules for men and women living on campus and how an infraction involving a visit to a fraternity house resulted in her and her boyfriend being expelled for one semester.

In this interview, Rita Duarte Marinho discusses her experiences pursuing a doctoral degree in political science at Brown University from 1975 to 1979.

In this interview, Rowan Potter, Brown University class of 2019, discusses their undergraduate experiences navigating student leadership, gender identity, mental health, and disability justice on campus.

Potter begins by describing the public school they attended in Ridgewood, New Jersey, their parents’ educational backgrounds, and their 12-year experience developing leadership skills with their mother through the Girl Scouts. Potter also discusses coming out as a lesbian while in high school and bringing that experience to Brown.

In this interview, Sara Matthiesen, Brown University class of 2015, discusses her experiences as a professor and social justice activist in Washington, DC, during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

In this interview, then Brown and RISD Dual-Degree student Sebastián Castro Niculescu discusses her experience growing up in and around Queens, New York, her childhood education, admittance to Brown-RISD, and social life around the turn of the Trump Administration. 

In this interview, Susan Cowell explains her reasons for choosing to attend Pembroke College, her expectations for campus culture, her roommate's struggles with class differences, and the social life of Pembroke. She also discusses her own her peers' efforts to protest the Girls School culture, including stealing the chimes, and a march to the Dean's house.

Susan E. Graber begins Part 1 her interview by sharing some family background information such as her mother’s college education and the expectation that her children would also attend college. She explains why she chose to attend Pembroke College and recalls some difficulties she faced as a woman pursuing science. Graber remembers her ambivalence about pursuing graduate school and the overall assumption that Pembroke graduates would go on to a career or graduate work.

In this interview recorded on the eve of the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, eight Brown University alumnae discuss the factors that led them to found the women’s liberation student group, Women of Brown United (WBU) in 1970.  They detail campus life and group activism in the midst of the sexual revolution, ongoing Vietnam War and wider political and societal upheaval across the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.