Historical Row – Page 4 – Wesleyan University Magazine

2010 Issue 2June 15, 2010May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: CLEMENT VOSE AND THE COLLECTION ON LEGAL CHANGE

Trick question: What do the 18th-century British legal reformer Lord Mansfield, migratory birds, the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Prohibition repeal in the United States have to do with each other? Answer: All can be studied through Wesleyan’s Collection on Legal Change. These seemingly unrelated topic…

2010 Issue 1January 20, 2010May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: WOMEN RETURN TO WES

For most of Wesleyan’s first century and a half, the issue of whether men and women should be educated together seemed to be considered in forty–year time periods. From 1831 to 1871, all male. From 1872 to 1912, coeducat…

2009 Issue 3December 20, 2009May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: THE COLLEGE PLAN

Imagine a Wesleyan without academic departments based on traditionally recognized disciplines. Students (perhaps even faculty) live, eat, study, and socialize together in groups organized around intellectual interests. F…

2009 Issue 2June 20, 2009May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: WESLEYAN IN THE DEPRESSION

The Great Depression brings a series of iconic images to mind. There’s the unemployment line, the bread line, the line to get money out of the bank before it goes bust. There’s the Dust Bowl and Dorothea Lange’s migrant …

2009 Issue 1January 20, 2009May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: WILLIAM MANCHESTER, THE WRITER AT WESLEYAN

William Manchester was a well-known figure on the Wesleyan University campus for nearly 50 years. He served first as an editor of university publications, then as a fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies, later as adj…

2008 Issue 4December 20, 2008May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRESIDENT

One small aspect of Barack Obama’s rise to the White House is actually not groundbreaking: he is far from the first future president to find his way to Wesleyan. Middletown has played host to four sitting presidents and …

2008 Issue 3September 20, 2008May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND WESLEYAN FREEDOM RIDERS

Most Wesleyan alumni are well aware of the visits of Martin Luther King Jr. to Wesleyan in the 1960s. Clearly the most famous and charismatic Civil Rights Movement figure, Martin Luther King profoundly affected the Wesle…

2008 Issue 1January 20, 2008May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: TIME FOR A BREAK!

When you spend your life in a university community, the academic calendar can seem as inevitable as the change of seasons in New England. The new year starts in September, close to Labor Day. Frosh show up early for orie…

2007 Issue 4December 20, 2007May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: INAUGURATING A WESLEYAN PRESIDENT

Few academic ceremonies are more steeped in tradition than the inauguration of a new university president. Naturally, Wesleyan’s 16 inaugurations have varied in detail, but certain key elements recur: an academic process…

2007 Issue 3September 20, 2007May 5, 2014

HISTORICAL ROW: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL STREET IN AMERICA

That would be our own High Street, of course, and the luminary who made the statement would be Charles Dickens. At least that’s the story according to a 1942 article about the DKE House by Lucy Colton Wells. Mrs. Wells r…