The main purpose of the Office of Special Collections and Archives at Southwestern is to collect, document, preserve, and make accessible artifacts and records associated with the University's…
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Southwestern often selectively calls on its past to authorize its present and future. Partially because of the constant turnover in students, many things here become naturalized--appearing as if they…
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When Southwestern tells its story, it often sounds like things just happen, or that heroic leaders made things happen. But it almost always has worked the other way around, where things have happened…
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Southwestern has enrolled White students since the beginning. Since the 1960s, the student body has slowly become more diverse in terms of race and ethnicity. In the early years, these students of…
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When you walk around Southwestern's campus, you encounter people's names. Some names are there because they are being remembered for some contribution they made to the institution or…
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In keeping with its normative culture as a predominantly white institution (PWI) for most of its existence, Southwestern's conception of its "town and gown" relationship to Georgetown did not…
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Southwestern was formed and located in Georgetown, Texas, in 1872 by consolidating four root colleges--Rutersville, McKenzie, Soule, and Wesleyan--into Texas University, which was eventually renamed…
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Southwestern University, just like all four of its root colleges, is directly connected to Methodism. This relationship was particularly problematic in the mid- to late-19th Century, when all of the…
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In 2020, Ernest Kurth Residence Hall was renamed Ernest Clark Residence Hall. Ernest Kurth was a longtime member of the Southwestern Board of Trustees and someone who actively impeded the racial…
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Since its early years in Georgetown, Southwestern has enrolled both men and women, but in ways that segregated men from women students in separate and unequal spheres, both literally and figuratively,…
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Colleges and universities depend heavily on philanthropy for funding for buildings as well as programming. While the institutions are grateful for this support, it does generate lasting effects on the…
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For generations, students have had spaces for them built by university leaders or have claimed other campus public spaces controlled by the adults at Southwestern for themselves. These entries explore…
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Regardless of how a place is set up, the everyday inhabitants of that place generate their own uses. The now classic theorization of this dynamic comes from Michel de Certeau. In The Practice of Every…
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The first students of color at Southwestern were forced to assimilate to its dominant culture as a Predominantly White Institution (PWI). As such, they were usually either domestic students of color…
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