While I am still at the start of my research journey, I am broadly looking into Jewish life in the earlier days of Bryn Mawr College — with particular interest paid to instances of discrimination that have slipped through the cracks of the college’s history. I plan to read Helen Horowitz’s biography on M. Carey Thomas, as well as look at Bryn Mawr’s collection of digitized scrapbooks. So far I have been reading a Jewish student’s scrapbook, named Bertha Szold (Class of 1895). I also plan to go through Marion Edwards Park and Katharine Elizabeth McBride’s office papers, and look at the hard work of a Bryn Mawr student, Caitlin Haskett, who last summer completed an oral history project on Jewish alumnae from the 1940s and 1950s. 

There is not an extreme breadth of information on Bryn Mawr’s Jewish students, so I think my main focus at the moment is identifying the resources I will make use of. I also know that earlier in Bryn Mawr’s history there was an instance of a parent complaining that her daughter was living next to Jewish students, and as a result, Jewish students were all moved further from campus and isolated from their non-Jewish peers. One objective of mine is to learn more about this incident and find or seek out a more personal account of this experience. As I continue with my research, I will gain a greater understanding of the purpose and direction of my project.