Remembering the gendered spatial politics of Southwestern

13 Locations | Curated by Placing Memory

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, and which reflected and reinforced patriarchal, heteronormative, and cis-normative assumptions about how determinant gender is and about how students should conduct themselves, who they should live with, who they could affiliate with and why and how, and even what they should study and aspire to become.

The entries in this theme work on evaluating this legacy in different ways and with different conclusions. Within the constraints of this separate and often unequal system, early White female students, and the leaders who were responsible for them, created a vibrant and distinctive female culture at Southwestern. To contemporary eyes, it may look stifling and even bizarre, but in other ways it reflects the resilience of the first minorities on campus as women sought to make an institution built by and for White men work also for them.

East Campus, now a space for first-year students, once was dedicated to housing women students of Southwestern. Today, the two sides of campus are not thought of the same way, as most people think of East campus as the place for first years and and West campus as the place for upperclass students. But it is important to remember that the initial split between East and West campus, still active…
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Laura Kuykendall was a central female figure on the Southwestern campus from the early to mid-1900s. She was a champion for youth culture and an advocate for expanding the common notions of what a female’s education entailed. Kuykendall is not a hero by any means, nor do I attempt to make her out to be, but she served as a key individual in enacting how Southwestern shaped, taught, and managed its…
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This event, owned and operated by the women of Southwestern’s campus from 1925 to 1950, was highly unique in its proceedings and practices. Unlike the other events planned by Dean of Women Laura Kuykendall, this event was entirely produced by and for women. It was held inside the Woman’s Building, in private, with exclusively female students and women from the Georgetown community. Apart from…
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The Ladies’ Annex building was built in 1879 in the place where Brown-Cody now stands. It was the first University building built on this campus, as it was separated by several blocks from Southwestern’s “Old Campus,” closer to downtown Georgetown. For the first few decades of its existence, it was essentially self-contained as a separate college for women, complete with classrooms, housing,…
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May 1st, 1915 dated the first annual May Fete celebration on Southwestern’s campus. Initiated, organized, directed, and led by Instructor of Expression and later Dean of Women Laura Kuykendall, this annual event served to celebrate “the birth of Spring.” It grew to draw in Southwestern’s largest crowd of community members and guests across Texas for the springtime spectacle. This vastly-attended…
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The displaced residents of the Ladies’ Annex were temporarily housed in Mood Hall, with the male residents of Mood being housed throughout the community. The university acted quickly to construct a new building for its female students and named it in honor of Laura Kuykendall, Dean of Women,…
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In the early 20th Century, women students of Southwestern were molded to value and practice certain “feminine” qualities, to be a daughter of the institution, to be exposed a wider range of individuals, and to explore both academic subjects and future life-pathways that would be left shut otherwise. Although women’s role at Southwestern was, yes, to fill and perfect their “innate” qualities, in…
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