Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University
A place for news and information about rare books, manuscripts and university archives.
A Spatial History of Wesleyan University combines geographical and quantitative analysis with archival and oral history research to interpret the past in place. It is the product of the Spring 2015 course in Digital History at Wesleyan taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of History Amrys O. Williams, part of the university’s Digital and Computational Knowledge … Read more
Is Russell House haunted? Video producer Ben Travers investigated, aided in part with resources from Special Collections & Archives. Happy Halloween! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsGCAPgCcBo
In the fall of 1910, a young man from Oneonta, New York—a small town made important by the railroad earlier in the 19th century—stepped onto Wesleyan’s campus. He was only the second in his family to go to college, but he was not the first Cardinal; his older brother had recently graduated in 1907 and … Read more
When sophomore Arch Doty moved into room 23 of Clark Hall in September, 1939, he brought with him a radio transmitter he had built at home the previous summer. Using a turntable, 78 rpm records, a microphone, the transmitter, and an antenna wire hanging out of Arch’s window, student-run radio at Wesleyan hit the airwaves. … Read more
In the 1920s, Wesleyan students could use this helpful card to communicate quickly and easily with family and friends using 140 characters or less.
If you were a female high school senior in 1969, you might have encountered this flyer. In 1970, Wesleyan once again admitted women as freshmen (Wesleyan was a coeducational institution from 1872 to 1912), and 2014 marks the 40th anniversary of their graduation. You can read much more about the return to coeducation in … Read more
We recently received this postcard as a donation from Steve Humphrey ’63 by way of Philip Rockwell ’65 MALS ’73. It’s a postcard showing the old Delta Kappa Epsilon house, which was torn down in 1928 to make way for the present DKE house that was constructed on the same site. What makes this really … Read more
Regular readers of Pick of the Week (which has been on vacation for a while) will remember a post from October 2012 written by Abbey Francis about a Wesleyan sweater that belonged to Calvin Kuhl ’27. Mr. Kuhl was quite active while he was a student, and Abbey found him pictured wearing the sweater in … Read more
This post features photographs from Wesleyan’s 1958 junior prom. Here’s wishing you all the best during this holiday season and a Happy New Year!
As you may be aware by now, the CFA is celebrating its 40th anniversary this academic year. We worked with Pamela Tatge, Andy Chatfield, and John Elmore to provide a wide range of images from the SC&A collections that will be used to mark the occasion. Forty will be displayed in an online exhibition, Celebrating … Read more
