Abstract
In the spring of 1956, Emily Taylor answered a telephone call in her office at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. On the line was Laurence C. Woodruff, dean of students at the University of Kansas (KU), asking to interview her for their dean of women position. The outgoing KU dean of women, Martha Peterson, had landed one of the nation’s most prestigious dean of women’s positions at the University of Wisconsin, and Taylor’s name had been recommended to Woodruff as a possible replacement. Taylor welcomed the call. She had recently enlisted Kate Hevner Mueller’s help to begin culling their shared professional network for a new post. When she accepted the associate dean of women role at Miami in 1953, they promised her the deanship on the impending retirement of the present dean. However, Helen Page had decided not to retire. And, while Taylor’s family lived in Ohio, KU appealed to her. The position held prestige. Peterson, the National Association of Deans of Women (NADW) advisor to the Intercollegiate Associated Women Students (IAWS), had just hosted the 1955 national IAWS convention at KU. More important to Taylor, the women’s organizations at KU operated solely through the dean of women’s office, which would give her significantly more freedom to craft her programs. She saw the opposite at Miami where all the policy decisions regarding the female students required faculty senate approval.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Sartorius, Kelly C., “Experimental Autonomy: Dean Emily Taylor and the Women’s Movement at the University of Kansas,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 33, 1 (Spring 2010), 3–21. Also, the University of Kansas (KU) credits Martha Peterson with establishing a dormitory system for freshmen women at KU. For further information on Peterson see: Todd Cohen, “University Mourns KU Graduate, Former Dean of Women Martha Peterson,” Press Release, University of Kansas, University Relations, http://www.news.ku.edu/2006/july/19/peterson.shtml; Emily Taylor, Interview by Author, December 13–14, 2003 (Lawrence, KS). Kate Hevner Mueller, Letter to Taylor, March 5, 1955, and Taylor, Letter to Mueller, March 7, 1955, both in Kate Hevner Mueller Papers (hereafter c170), Box 5, Folder: Taylor, Emily, Indiana University Archives, Bloomington, IN (hereafter IUA).
Clifford S. Griffin, The University of Kansas: A History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974), 503, 530, 617.
Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 189.
The exception to this is in institutions with home economics programs, where deans were often women. These programs often resided in land-grant universities. Linda Eisenmann, Higher Education for Women in Postwar America, 1945–1965 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 58–59.
Associated Women Students (AWS), “Regulations for University Women, 1955–56,” in Dean of Women’s Papers (hereafter RG 53/0), Box 1, Folder: Chronological 1957–58–1958–59, UKL; Beth L. Bailey, Sex in the Heartland (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 78–80.
Taylor, Interview by Author, July 1, 1997 (Lawrence, KS); Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953);
Morton M. Hunt, The Natural History of Love (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959);
Mirra Komarovsky, Women in the Modern World: Their Education and Their Dilemmas (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953); “Reference Data on the Status of Women in America. Part I. Legal Discrimination against Women. Part II. Discrimination in Politics,” in RG 67/12, Folder: 1956–1957, UKL; Sarah Wohlrabe, “Taylor: Committed to Equal Rights for Women,” University Daily Kansan (UDK), October 19, 1973, 8; Office of the Dean of Women, “The Following Information Is on File in the Library of the Dean of Women’s Office,” Date Unknown, in Commission on the Status of Women Records (hereafter RG 67/48), Box 1, Folder: 1970–1971, UKL.
Taylor, “Optimum Use of Students in Faculty Committees,” Journal of the NADW (March 1953), 126–129. The first higher education institution to provide women with keys was located in Colorado. The author has not been able to determine which school implemented this policy prior to the University of Kansas. Taylor, Interview by Author, December 13–14, 2003; Taylor, Interview by Author, Summer, 1997 (Lawrence, KS). For discussions of the student movements at KU, see Bailey, Sex in the Heartland, 75–104. Also see, Rusty L. Monhollon, This Is America? The Sixties in Lawrence, Kansas (New York: Palgrave, 2002). Bailey particularly addresses the keys.
The author thanks Ann Gardner, Lawrence Daily Journal-World editorial page editor and graduate of KU for providing the information about Mortarboard senior privileges. Lynn Peril, College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-Eds, Then and Now (New York, London: Norton, 2006), 150; Ridder, Interview by Author, February 17, 2009.
Edward C. Solomon, “A Condensation of Ideas from a Conference on Educational Needs of College Women for Marriage and Family Planning,” Journal of the National Association of Women Deans and Counselors 26, 2 (January 1963), 46.
Judy Farrell, “Studied at KU; Hour Reforms,” Topeka Capital-Journal, March 20, 1966, 1; Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 26–27.
Copyright information
© 2014 Kelly C. Sartorius
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sartorius, K.C. (2014). Unlocking Women’s Autonomy. In: Deans of Women and the Feminist Movement. Historical Studies in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481344_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137481344_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46555-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48134-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Education CollectionEducation (R0)