Hello! It’s been a while.
This blog post will mainly be a ramble of updates and revisions that I’ve been making to my project.
I’m away from a lot of my sources/books that I previously wanted to include in this project due to COVID-19 and subsequently not being able to be at BMC campus. Therefore, I’ve altered my focus and have been sifting through a lot of digital archives in the repository online, to see what’s available to me and what I could potentially use in my research. I’ve been looking mainly at the Bryn Mawr College annual reports from the president to the board of trustees, M. Carey Thomas’s personal letters, and the Alumnae bulletins.
I’ll be honest, the majority, if not all, of the sources I’ve looked at so far do not mention Bryn Mawr’s relationship with the Society of Friends. While I’m not entirely surprised at this outcome, because of how early BMC decided to become non-denominational, I do think this might actually serve my project. In my opinion, one interesting thing about archival research is all the “white space”, for a lack of a better word, that you encounter. This white space, to me, is all the stuff not mentioned in papers/sources/documents. I believe that it can be useful to acknowledge that somethings, like Quakerism, are not talked about, that there is a hole in what’s been left behind, and try to investigate why that is. Though I don’t exactly know right now how I’ll present that in my discussions.
Additionally, due to the fact that I left most of my sources at campus and most online sources don’t mention Quakerism or the decision to go non-denominational, I’m therefore trying to find trends among the sources I look at that loosely connect to BMC’s secularism. For example, focusing on how the chapel in Taylor hall changed, the number of quaker students on campus diminished, and how the architecture of the school was influenced by Carey’s personal beliefs.
Along with these new sources, I also want to reach out to a Quaker professor in the Math department to see if she would be willing to let me interview her about her opinions about the college’s relationship and history with the Society of Friends and whether that impacted her decision to come to Bryn Mawr. I feel like this would help connect what I’m learning about BMC’s history with religion to the present affects that can still be felt within the community.
To wrap things up, I’ve also been thinking about the focus of my research in general. I’m debating about whether to shift my focus from just the relationship BMC has/had to Quakerism, to more broadly the evolution of secularism at BMC and it’s subsequent affect on the community at large…
Also, I’ve attached my written proposal for the project as well: