World War II and the Illusion of Equality

As new president Herman Lee Donovan began at UK in 1941, Dean Sarah Blanding left and Sarah Bennett Holmes became Dean of Women. World War II heavily influenced enrollment patterns on campus, and male students left for war while military units began training and living on campus. Women students and faculty obtained unprecedented status and influence on the campus. The number of women faculty increased, and women students, for the first time, fully participated in a coed student government and university marching band. But many, if not most, of the gains quickly disappeared in the postwar return to “normalcy.” Dean Holmes fought hard to keep women students from being pushed aside by returning veterans and continued to be concerned about employment opportunities for women graduates.

Sarah Blanding and the Modern College Woman

This chapter highlights the changes in UK women students in a post–World War I environment during the 1920s. It introduces Dean of Women Sarah Blanding, a protégé of Frances Jewell McVey, who followed McVey as Dean of Women and would later become the first woman president of Vassar College. In response to an ever-expanding social culture on campus, Blanding introduced new rules and regulations for women students, both on the campus and beyond; and she enforced them vigorously. The chapter also examines the demise of women’s intercollegiate athletics and its impact on women students. This decade brought an even greater emphasis on social status and relationships between women and men students, and it saw the rise of the “beauty queen” as a fixture on the college campus.

Mujeres abriendo camino en la universidad: el proyecto de Eugenie A. Leonard en Estados Unidos = Women Opening Way at the University: Eugenie A. Leonard’s Project in United States

Resumen: Eugenie A. Leonard (1888-1980) es una destacada pero desconocida figura. Profesora de Educación en la Universi­dad de Syracusa y en The Catholic University of America (Washington), trabajó también en ambas instituciones como Decana de Muje­res. Desde ese cargo desarrolló un programa que facilitaba el alojamiento de las mujeres y su integración en la vida universitaria en igualdad de oportunidades con los hombres. Sin embargo, sus aportaciones han pasado muy desapercibidas y no existe nin­gún tipo de estudio biográfico sobre ella. Es interesante analizar su trayectoria académica y su aportación a los Women’s Studies.Palabras clave: universidades, Esta­dos Unidos, siglo XX, mujeres, igualdad.Abstract: Eugenie A. Leonard (1888-1980) was a relevant but unknown figure. Professor of Education at Syracuse Univer­sity and The Catholic University of America (Washington). Besides, she also works as Dean of Women. She developed a program in order to facilitate the women housing and their integration at the university looking equality of opportunities with the men. Howe­ver, her works are unknown. It does not exist one biography about her. It is interesting to analyze her academic trajectory and her wri­tings about Women’s Studies.Keywords: universities, United States, 20th Century, women, equality.

Climbing the Hilltop

By the first decade of the twentieth century, Howard University emerged as the premier institution for higher learning for African Americans. Using the life of Lucy Diggs Slowe, a Howard alumnus and the first Dean of Women at Howard, this chapter discusses the experiences of African American women at Howard during the early twentieth century to illustrate how New Negro women negotiated intra-racial gender ideologies and conventions as well as Jim Crow racial politics. Although women could attend and work at Howard, extant African American gender ideologies often limited African American women’s opportunities as students, faculty, and staff. Slowe was arguably the most vocal advocate for African American women at Howard. She demanded that African American women be prepared for the “modern world,” and that African American women be full and equal participants in public culture. Her thirty-plus years affiliation with Howard makes her an ideal subject with which to map the emergence of New Negro womanhood at this prestigious university. This chapter presents Howard as an elite and exclusive site for the actualization of New Negro womanhood while simultaneously asserting the symbolic significance of Howard University for African American women living in and moving to Washington. Although most African American women in Washington could not and did not attend or work at Howard, this institution was foundational to an emergent sense of possibility and aspiration that propelled the intellectual and cultural strivings of African American women in New Negro era Washington.