About this Exhibit

This Web exhibit is based on the exhibit “’On Equal Terms:’ Educating Women at the University of Chicago” which was on view in the Special Collections Research Center, the University of Chicago Library, March 11 – July 14, 2009. The exhibit was curated by Monica Mercado and Katherine Turk, graduate students in history, with input from Professor Deborah Nelson. From the time the University welcomed its first students in the fall of 1892, women have had very different stories to tell about the experiments in co-education and faculty diversification; the experience of the classroom, the laboratory, the dorm, and the streets of Hyde Park; the issues of mentorship, intellectual community, and career advancement; and the opportunities for political action and community involvement, for friendship, romance, and sexual experimentation. The exhibition draws from the rich University archives located at the Special Collections Research Center, and from a group of more than 70 oral histories taken from alumni, faculty, and staff from 1935 to the present day collected by students and faculty affiliated with the Center for Gender Studies. Kerri Sancomb, Special Collections Exhibition Specialist, produced the exhibition; and Julia Gardner, also in Special Collections, served as its coordinator.