This interview with members of the Pembroke College class of 1967 documents the undergraduate experiences of Carol Lemlein, Susan Haas, Brenda Hubbard, Karen Wolk, Sharon Drager, and Judith Minno, at their 50^th reunion.

This interview with members of the Pembroke College class of 1956, highlights the under graduate experiences of Gretchen Gross, Jane Elton Hamlett, Jennifer Davis Morgan, Marjorie Jane Jenckes, Geneva Carol Whitney, Margaret Ann Devoe, and Barbara Ann Perrino, at their 50th reunion.

This interview with the Pembroke College class of 1959 documents the undergraduate experiences of Katherine Robinson Hampstead, Caryl-Ann Miller, Jacqueline Jones, Diane Eileen Scola, Elizabeth Davidson Taft, Nina Wiita Krooss, and Laura T. Fishman, at their 50th reunion.

This interview with members of the Pembroke College class of 1961 captures the undergraduate experiences of Emily Arnold, Margaret Katherine Ellickson, Elizabeth Francis Diggs, Sandy Barnell, Wendy Friedman Brest, Chelsea Remington, Ann Dolores Matteodo, Carol Gotes Moreland, Beth Arlene Burwell, and Ellen Jane Shaffer, at their 50^th reunion.

This interview with members of the Pembroke College class of 1963 summarizes the undergraduate experiences of Martha Jean McCauley, Judith Margaret Watman, Jennifer Williams, Nancy C. Scull, Elaine Patterson Piller, Jean Amatneek, Carol Marcia Spindler, Linda Jane Brody, Judith Ann Neal, and Barbara Mae Smith, at their 50^th reunion.

This interview with members of the Pembroke College class of 1966 captures the undergraduate experiences of Kristie E. Miller, Ulle Viiroja, Carol R. Dannenberg, Phyllis A. Kollmer, Lisa S. Manfull, Beverly Heafitz, and Leah W. Sprague, at their 50^th reunion.

This interview with members of the Pembroke College class of 1968 documents the undergraduate experiences of Virginia R. Heinbockel, Sally R. Kusnitz, Bernicestine E. McLeod, Helaine Benson Palmer, Elizabeth S. Remage, Carole L. Sayle, Rochelle R. Sender, Jean K. Trescott, Nancy B. Turck, and Ancelin M. Vogt, at their 50th reunion.

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 this interview, Ancelin M. Vogt discusses her parents’ backgrounds as intellectuals and graduates of Harvard University and Radcliffe College. She notes that Radcliffe was her first-choice school but after being denied there it was a scholarship to Pembroke College that influenced her decision to attend. She explains the lack of support she felt from Pembroke administrators when her mother died during her sophomore year, and the general inequality she witnessed between services and activities offered to female versus male students.

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, at 80 years old, Carol Canner reflects on her undergraduate experience at Pembroke College in the 1950s.She begins by sharing some family background, including her father’s Harvard University education, and her mother’s Boston University Medical School education that was quickly ended by the Great Depression. Canner recalls that while growing up and when entering Pembroke, her goal was to get married and that post-graduation career assistance was nonexistent.

In this interview, Carol R. Dannenberg begins by explaining her decision to attend Pembroke College. She discusses dating life, and student/professor relationships, as well as her involvement with student government, tension over curfews, the lack of role models on campus, and being involved in the Peace Corps during summer break.

In this interview, Ferguson tells why she chose to attend Pembroke College over Wellesley College; how following a woman she admired, she wanted to become a Boston insurance agent; and that she never felt she needed to be liberated. She discusses the remnants of Victorianism; marching for suffrage before age ten, and always having had a female doctor. She recalls the rules and regulations of Pembroke; mandatory chapel and the speeches given by Deans Allinson and Morriss; and the Brown/Pembroke merger which she opposed.

Clara Elizabeth Goodale ‘39 is the niece of Nettie Goodale Murdock who was a member of Pembroke College’s first class in 1895. This interview captures the memories Murdock shared with her niece of her time at Pembroke.

In Part 1 of this interview, Cynthia Lee Jenner begins by describing her family background. She talks about the contemporary stigma against a middle class wife with a career and the effect of this on her mother and herself. From this context, she attended an all-girls boarding school and Pembroke College, both of which sought (though failed) to prepare her for “gracious living.” She goes on to discuss deciding to attend Pembroke, her tour guide, living at 87 Prospect Street (now Machado House), and her advanced discussion-based coursework.

In Part 1 of this interview, Doris Madeline Hopkins begins by discussing her early education and family life in Rhode Island. She talks about the expectations for “nice girls” at Pembroke College in the 1920s, about the curriculum, and the classes she took. She talks about 1920s fashion, dancing and bootleg liquor, including clubs around the city where students could go to drink. Hopkins talks about reading for classes and getting books from the public library when they were unavailable elsewhere. She also mentions her friendship with Alice Elizabeth O'Connor.

Dorothy Ann Haus begins this interview by talking about her life before Pembroke College, growing up as a “Pollyanna” in Brattleboro, Vermont. Haus discusses many different aspects of life as a Pembroker including the rules and regulations, the gym requirement, dorm life, dating, freshman orientation, formal dinners and demitasse, and playing varsity sports. Haus recalls celebrations such as Father-Daughter Weekend, May Day, and Campus Dance.

In a joint interview, classmates Edna Ruth MacDonald and Ruth Dorothea Peterson speak on the academic atmosphere at Pembroke College and the heavy constraints placed on women’s conduct and careers in the early 1900s. They begin by discussing their decisions to attend Pembroke, describing the expectation of college education their families had for them. MacDonald imagines that perhaps their mothers regretted getting married early and not going to college, and wanted something different for them.

In this interview, Elsie B. Anderson discusses her parents’ Swedish origins, their sixth grade-level educations, and their paths to learning English. She goes on to recall having three career options – nurse, teacher, or secretary – and choosing to become a nurse.

Ferelene "Nan" Bailey begins by discussing her childhood, the benefits of living overseas during her childhood, her experience applying to Brown University, and her expectations of her experience. She spends a significant amount of time discussing the various and bountiful activist groups she participated in, and more broadly, social turmoil during the seventies surrounding issues such as the Vietnam War and birth control.

In this interview, Grace Amelia McAuslan begins by explaining why she decided to attend Pembroke College and what her first impressions were. She notes some of the courses she took as a sociology concentrator and momentarily remembers participating in the Pembroke orchestra. She shares brief memories of Dean Margaret Shove Morriss and Dean Anne Crosby Emery Allinson.

In this interview, Harva Zelda Fisher explains her reasons for attending Pembroke College, particularly citing geographic proximity to her home and small student population. She recalls Dean Margaret Shove Morriss, Physical Education Director Bessie Rudd, and Professor George Downing, but says one of her favorite professors was Israel Kapstein. She gives a brief educational and personal background of her parents and moves on to vaguely remembering some Pembroke traditions and more clearly remembering Sophomore Masque.

This interview was conducted with Ruth Cserr on behalf of her mother Helen FitzGerald Cserr who was a professor of biomedical sciences at Brown University and who was one of four plaintiffs in the Louise Lamphere vs Brown University sex discrimination lawsuit.

In this interview, Janice Vanderwater discusses her college education at Barnard College and her path to becoming the first female faculty member of the English department at Brown University, then the director of dramatics. She worked at Brown from 1940 until 1966 and she details how the campus, and her position as a faculty member, was transformed by World War II, including the development of coed classes and trimesters, the increase of Army students, and the decrease of male faculty that allowed for her promotions in the department.

Joyce Loretta Richardson begins her interview by discussing the experiences and people that led her to apply to and attend Pembroke College. She cites experiences such as going to boarding school, having a high achieving family, rejection from Radcliffe, and her fear of swimming. She contrasts her experience at boarding school with her arrival to Pembroke, discussing the stereotypical “Penny Pembrokers,” encountering racism for the first time, and being shocked into silence. She explains the extent to which gender and racial issues were not identified and the suppression she felt.

In this interview, speaking nearly fifty years after graduation from Pembroke College, Katherine Virginia Faulkner begins Part 1 of her interview by describing the intellectual difficulty she encountered in her transition from public schools in Henderson, North Carolina. She explains choosing to attend Pembroke for the different culture it fostered compared to that in North Carolina, as well as how she decided to concentrate in psychology.

Kristie E. Miller, an award-winning biographer, begins her interview discussing the controversy surrounding her decision to attend college. Her mother, a supporter of Joseph McCarthy, always discouraged her academic interest and wanted her to go to a politically conservative school, while her father wanted her to go to a prestigious university. In Part 1, Miller reflects on the rules and regulations at Pembroke, as well as the relationship between Brown students and Pembroke students.

In Part 1 of this interview, Lois Black begins by explaining what it felt like to attend Pembroke College with a working class background. She describes her first experiences of Pembroke, including living in East House, and the differences between private and public high school students. Black goes on to discuss racism at Pembroke, the exclusion of women from the Brown Marching Band and Brown Sailing Association, and her participation in student movements for desegregation and reformation of gracious living regulations.

An assistant professor of Anthropology and the only woman in her department when she was hired in 1968, Louise Lamphere was denied tenure in 1974. The Anthropology Department claimed that her scholarship was theoretically weak. Lamphere claimed she was the victim of sex discrimination and argued that the small number of women on the Brown faculty was evidence of a larger pattern of discrimination. After unsuccessfully pursuing an internal appeals process, on May 10, 1975 Lamphere filed a lawsuit in United States District Court.

Margaret "Peg" Mary Porter begins Part 1 of her 1988 interview discussing her family background and her motivation for both going to college and choosing Pembroke College. She reflects on what is was like to attend college during the Depression years, Franklin Delano Roosevelt becoming President of the United States, and the beginnings of WWII. She considers her freshman year, required courses, and her classes, telling vivid stories of professors. Porter speaks on the then archaic social and academic rules for Pembroke students, and her extracurricular activities on campus.

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.

Mary Bernadette Banigan begins her interview by discussing her family background, her experience at Classical High School, and her reasons for attending Pembroke College. Throughout Part 1, she describes her favorite professors, and postgraduate options for an English major at Pembroke. She ends the section by explaining her time at Chapel and her extracurricular interests, particularly her intense involvement with Varsity Debating.

Mary Hill Swope begins her interview discussing her childhood and family background, especially her family’s emphasis on education. She explains her decision to transfer to Pembroke College from the Women’s College at the University of North Carolina for her junior and senior year of college, making her decision largely due to Brown’s art program. Swope also speaks on her mother’s expectation that she would marry, while she preferred to pursue academic and professional interests.

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.

Penelope “Penny” A. Baskerville begins Part 1 of this interview by recounting her family life and early education in New Jersey. She discusses the experience of being a racial minority at Pembroke (Baskerville was one of six Black women in her class) as well as the general novelty of the college social experience, stressing the strength of the friendships she developed. Baskerville recounts her extracurricular involvement, the founding of the Afro-American Society, and the unique nature of college in the 1960s.

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 Part 1 of this interview, Romaine Ahlstrom discusses the many moves her family made as child, her reasons for choosing  to attend Pembroke College, the difficulties living in the sexist culture of the 1950s, her personal challenges at Pembroke, and the academic curriculum.

In this interview, Roswell Johnson, MD, discusses his time at Brown University as the director of health services in the 1960s and the controversy surrounding his willingness to prescribe birth control to Pembroke students in 1965.

In a joint interview, classmates Edna Ruth MacDonald and Ruth Dorothea Peterson speak on the academic atmosphere at Pembroke College and the heavy constraints placed on women’s conduct and careers in the early 1900s. They begin by discussing their decisions to attend Pembroke, describing the expectation of college education their families had for them. MacDonald imagines that perhaps their mothers regretted getting married early and not going to college, and wanted something different for them.

In this interview, Sarah Elizabeth Minchin discusses the proliferation of theatre at Brown and in the greater Providence community. She tells us of the Talma Theatre, The Players Theatre, Henry Ames Barker, and elocution among other theatre-related endeavors.

In this 1988 interview with his daughter, Rebecca Krawiec ‘90, Steven S. Krawiec contributes fascinating insights regarding both the social and academic relationships between Brown University men and Pembroke College women in the early 1960s. Krawiec begins by providing a short biography of his parents’ educations and careers, and explains how he came to attend Brown. He goes on to describe his freshman year - including his first day at Brown, his roommate, courses he took, and his dormitory.

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 Part 1 of this interview, Sylvia Rosen reflects on her freshman year at Pembroke College, the dormitories, dating, and meeting her husband.

In Part 2, she expands on the “thrilling” academic atmosphere at Pembroke, as well as her experience as one of the few Jewish students on campus.