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 this interview, Clarice LaVerne Thompson discusses her educational and professional path to becoming a visiting professor in Africana Studies and Music Director at Brown University, and founder of RPM Voices of Rhode Island. 

In this interview, Elaine Frank ’39, the daughter of a Providence-born father and Lithuanian-born mother, describes herself as a “City Girl” and discusses her decision to attend Pembroke College as a transfer student from LaSalle Junior College. She details her involvement in various dramatic societies at Hope High School, Pembroke, and throughout Rhode Island. Frank also recalls her Pembroke gym teacher, Bessie Rudd, and Dean Margaret Shove Morriss, as well as coeducational and single-sex classes on both the Pembroke and Brown campuses.

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.

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.

In this interview, Markita Morris, Brown University class of 1998, brings a perspective of a north Philadelphian who attended public school, was housing insecure, and who adored her time at Brown. This is also the Pembroke Center Oral History Project’s first interview conducted via FaceTime.

In this interview, captured during Brown University’s 2018 All-Class Black Alumni Reunion, Nicole “Nikki Strong” Harrison, class of 1992, details her activism within theatre and dance programs on campus.

Sarah Kay, Brown University class of 2010, begins her interview by describing her experiences as a child during 9/11 in New York City. Kay recalls in great detail the effects that 9/11 had both on her family, as well as her budding interest in poetry. Kay continues by describing her decision to apply to and attend Brown University for her undergraduate degree.

In this interview, Susan Beth Adler, Pembroke College class of 1958, recalls her decades of professional and volunteer service to Rhode Island and Brown University.

Adler begins by describing her family’s long history within the Brown community, her mother being in the Pembroke class of 1925 and her father in the Brown class of 1918. She recalls living in Miller Hall and participating in Sock and Buskin – a coeducational theatre group. She briefly touches upon dating and relationships in college during the 1950s before turning to her life after Pembroke.