Pembroke College Department of Physical Education records, 1914-1978

John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts
Box A
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148
Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Published in 2024

Collection Overview

Title:	Pembroke College Department of Physical Education records
Date range:	1914-1978
Creator:	Pembroke College (Brown University)
Extent:	6 Linear Feet
Abstract:	This collection contains the records of the Pembroke College Department of Physical Education. Established in 1897, this department was part of Pembroke College, the women's college in Brown University until the women's and men's colleges merged in 1971. This collection includes physical education course materials, financial records, correspondence, conference materials, meeting materials, and museum objects dating from 1914 – 1978.
Language of materials:	English
Repository:	John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts
Collection number:	OF.1OA.1ZP

Scope & content

This collection contains the records of the Pembroke College Department of Physical Education. Established in 1897, this department was part of Pembroke College, the women's college in Brown University until the women's and men's colleges merged in 1971. This collection includes physical education course materials, financial records, correspondence, conference materials, meeting materials, and museum objects. Materials date from 1914 – 1978 and are arranged into 9 series.

Series 1, Courses: Hygiene and other instruction, 1915-1955, includes correspondence, syllabi, pamphlets, reports, lecture notes, material from other colleges, exams, and course evaluations by the students. The bulk of this series is material used by freshman course (referred to as Hygiene and Body Mechanics) instructors, but it also includes files used to teach gymnastics, camp counseling and water safety, and how to teach games. This series documents an important part of the required curriculum at Pembroke College, including implicit, if not explicit, definitions of what Pembroke women should know and how they should carry themselves and act. Since the freshman course had counterparts at most, if not all, women's colleges in the northeast, this series can be used to add to that more general history as well as to the social history of women at Brown. This series is arranged alphabetically by course title and then chronologically.

Series 2, Courses: Recreation and sports, 1915-1961, contains correspondence, exams, clippings, articles, rules, announcements, material from other colleges, reports, pamphlets, and results of inter- and intra-collegiate events. A number of instructional clippings, and printed pamphlets were discarded; a sampling was kept. In addition to the file of exams at the end of the series, exams appear throughout this series. Although Bessie Rudd was probably the primary owner of many of these files, some predate her arrival and many were added to and used by other instructors. In addition to documenting the variety of sport and recreation courses the department offered and some of the pedagogy used, this series provides information about early intercollegiate and intramural athletics. This series is arranged alphabetically by course title.

Series 3, Classes of 1933-1969, contains statistics (e.g. the class's combined weight), lists of potential athletes, notes taken during first year and senior student conferences, grades, results of swimming and other tests, lists of students restricted from specific physical activity and why, lists of students with dysmenorrhea, lecture notes, clippings, and some reunion material. It does not include posture pictures, which were destroyed (for one example, see series VI). Early files were marked "statistics". Portions of almost all of the flies in this series are closed until eighty years after the year of graduation. For a sample of some of the closed items, see the first folder in the series. The closed material includes all information regarding student grades and medical and physical descriptions. The first year and senior student conferences were conducted by Bessie Rudd, and later by Arlene Gorton. During those conferences. Rudd and Gorton noted such attributes as a student's height, weight, ideal weight, physical (e.g. severe acne) and emotional (e.g. moody) descriptions, if she had dysmenorrhea, notes regarding posture and corrective requirements therein, medical restrictions (e.g. has asthma--may drop out), athletic interests. and career plans. For more information on posture pictures, read The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal in The New York Times (January 15, 1996) and listen to these Pembroke Center Oral History Project interviews. This series is arranged chronologically by class year.

Series 4, Financial records, 1967-1968, includes work orders, invoices, purchase orders, and receipts that document some of the department's fiscal activity during one academic year. This series may provide insight into such diverse matters as what kinds of equipment the department had, and their reliance on taxicabs.

Series 5, Student organizations and events, 1914-1961, contains correspondence, programs, lists of Athletic and Recreation Association board members, score cards, and an Archery Club report. It includes lists of events, planning material, and results from the inter-class competition and demonstration days, sometimes known as Field Day. This series provides fragmentary evidence of the relationship between the department and student activities; more such documentation is available in series 8.

Series 6, Resources and correspondence, 1919-1972, documents the department's ties with other colleges including exhibitions and their sharing of resources, particularly regarding posture. Items include pamphlets, correspondence, programs, reports, speeches and radio scripts written by Pembroke College department staff and others. This series also contains the only posture pictures (all of one woman) found in these records, which are closed for research pending administrative review. For more information on posture pictures, read The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal in The New York Times (January 15, 1996) and listen to these Pembroke Center Oral History Project interviews. This series is arranged chronologically.

Series 7, Conferences and Professional Organizations, 1923-1976, contains reports, announcements, handouts, and correspondence, from conferences and organizations within which department staff were active. For material from organizations in which staff do not appear to have been active, see series 6. Many of these files were kept by Bessie Rudd, who continued to go to meetings and conferences and to collect material after her retirement. Because her files continue those begun in these departmental records, they remain in this collection. For the participation in similar organizations by former members of the department after the merger, see University Archives OF-lOA-2. The organizations represented here include: the Annual Conference of Instructors of Body Mechanics (the name of which changed several times, see the files for the name at any given time); the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation and its relational Section on Women's Athletics, Division for Girls and Women's Sports, Eastern District Association, and Rhode Island DGWS; the Eastern and, National Associations for Physical Education of College Women; the Women's Division of the National Amateur Athletic Federation; the [New England Women's Intercollegiate Sailing Association; and the Rhode Island Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation. Material from the body mechanics conferences documents the philosophy driving curriculum in Pembroke College's Freshman Course and similar courses in other departments, as well as illustrating the curriculum itself. This series provides the context of national, regional and state organizations within which the department acted. This series is arranged alphabetically by name.

Series 8, Women Coaches, 1968-1978

Series 9, Museum Objects, 1934-1976

The folder titles in this collection were virtually all taken from the titles on the files when they arrived in the archives. Unfortunately, these files do not provide much information about the Department of Physical Education before 1930. Although there is only one folder specifically devoted to the Pembroke College Athletic and Recreation Association, the work of this student organization is evident throughout these records.

Access Points

Subject Organizations

• Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women.
• Pembroke College (Brown University). Athletic and Recreation Association

Subject Topics

• Athletics.
• College sports for women
• Physical Education
• Physical education for women
• Posture.
• Women--Education.
• Women and Gender at Brown University

Arrangement

These records are arranged into 9 series:

Series 1, Courses: Hygiene and other instruction, 1915-1955

Series 2, Courses: Recreation and sports, 1915-1961

Series 3, Classes of 1933-1969

Series 4, Financial records, 1967-196

Series 5, Student organizations and events, 1914-1961

Series 6, Resources and correspondence, 1919-1972

Series 7, Conferences and Professional Organizations, 1923-1976

Series 8, Women Coaches, 1968-1978

Series 9, Museum objects, 1934-1976

Biographical / Historical

The Pembroke College Department of Physical Education was established in the fall of 1897 as the Department of Physical Culture in the Women's College. In 1904, it became the Department of Physical Training. The name changed again in 1912 to the Department of Hygiene and Physical Education. The department was located in Sayles Gymnasium after the building's dedication in 1907. In 1956 the department assumed its final name, the Department of Physical Education, until 1971 when it merged with the men's Department of Physical Education. The merger of men's and women's physical education and athletics was not complete, however, until 1973-74 when they had a single budget, administration, and faculty. Although it was known as the Department of Physical Education and Recreation in the 1960s, it is not clear that that was ever its official name. In 1892, the second year women were allowed to take Brown University's final examinations, women were required to exercise with dumb bells and Indian clubs and "in Swedish movements", and first year students had to take a course in hygiene. The exercise requirements reflect the growth of the new field of physical education; men were also required to exercise and hygiene was part of a required course for both sexes (at first physiology, later biology). By the mid-19l0s, however, women's requirements grew into a four-year program that cultivated fitness and femininity whereas the men's dwindled to two years, and then only one year, of exercise. It was not until 1957 that the chair of the department, Bessie Rudd, excused seniors without too many prior cuts from physical education their final year. In 1963, the requirement dropped to one year to match the men's. In 1970, the physical education requirement was eliminated for both sexes. Although hygiene was initially part of an introductory biology course and was also taught through the short-lived Household Economics department, by 1912, as its name proclaims, hygiene was an integral part of the department's work. A "freshman course" that included instruction in hygiene began before 1910. Hygiene included not only care for one's body through proper grooming, but also nutrition, information about diseases, and posture and other training appropriate for "proper" young women. Both parts of the department's mission (hygiene and physical education) required close connections to campus medical and health staff, from the days of the Medical Examiner through the emergence of the Division of University Health.

Although the Department of Physical Education was not the rubric under which competitive undergraduate women's sports developed, its staff facilitated student-run efforts to organize some A sports. (Although the work of the Athletic and Recreation Association, a student organization, is - evident throughout these files, for its own records, see the Pembroke College Athletic and Recreation Association records (OF-lQ-Alzp) at Brown University)

Although competition was carefully regulated so as to keep Pembroke women within the bounds of femininity, there was inter-class and even intercollegiate competition. The attempts to restrain competition may have been what produced intercollegiate "telegraphic meets" in bowling, archery, etc.; rather than compete directly, students sent their scores to be measured against the results from competing schools.

Some intercollegiate competition appears to have emerged from individual physical education courses, for example the Basketball course (see series II: Basketball). In addition to sports, the department was the locus of dance on campus until the late 1960s. The department offered dance courses and sponsored student performances and exhibitions by outside groups. May Day and Sophomore Masque productions were aided by department faculty.

For further historical information, see see Cindy Himes' "From Equity to Equality: Women's Athletics at Brown", in Polly Welts Kaufman's The Search for Equity: Women at Brown University, 1891-1991.

Access & Use

Access to the collection:	There are some restrictions on access for analog materials, including student records that are closed for 80 years and posture pictures, which were closed for research pending administrative review in 2024. The collection can only be seen by prior appointment. Some materials may be stored off-site and cannot be produced on the same day on which they are requested. Advance notice is required to view any audiovisual media or born-digital records that may exist in this collection.
Use of the materials:	All researchers seeking to publish materials from the collections of the John Hay Library are requested to complete a Notice of Intent to Publish, available on the John Hay Library website or by request, prior to reproducing, quoting, or otherwise publishing any portion or extract from this collection. Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the literary rights and to obtain any necessary permissions from them.
Preferred citation:	Pembroke College Department of Physical Education records, OF.1OA.1ZP, Box [#], Folder [#], Pembroke Center Archives, John Hay Library, Brown University.
Contact information:	John Hay Library, University Archives and Manuscripts Box A Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Telephone: Manuscripts: 401-863-3723; University Archives: 401-863-2148 Email: Manuscripts: hay@brown.edu; University Archives: archives@brown.edu

Administrative Information

ABOUT THE COLLECTION
Acquisition:	Many of these files were transferred from the Pembroke College Department of Physical Education to the University Archives via Pembroke Center Archivist Karen Lamoree in 1986 and 1988.
ABOUT THE FINDING AID
Author:	Raymond Butti Jr. and Amanda Knox on behalf of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the John Hay Library, Brown University.
Encoding:	This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-06-13.
Descriptive rules:	Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Sponsor:	Curatorial work provided by Karen Lamoree on behalf of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women and the Brown University Library.

Additional Information

Related material:

Related Materials Additional Pembroke College Department of Physical Education records exist in the University Archives. For clippings see the Topics File: 1-ZP Pembroke Athletics. For eleven comprehensive scrapbooks compiled by the department, see SB-lOA- lzp. For departmental bulletins, see Classified File: 1-ZP Physical Education Departmental Bulletins. For information about women's athletics at Brown University after the merger see the Women's Coaches minutes: OF-lOA-2. For physical education banners and clothing, see the Museum Objects Index. Records documenting women in the Department of Physical Education and in athletics at Brown University after the merger are in the departmental and athletics records as well as the Brown University women's athletics ephemera (Ms.2019.014) at Brown University. See also the Arlene Gorton files (OF-1UF-G3) at Brown University and her oral history interviews. For more information on posture pictures, read The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal in The New York Times (January 15, 1996) and listen to these Pembroke Center Oral History Project interviews.

Inventory

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