The second half of the twentieth century brought a world of change to women’s lives and American ideas about gender. Life magazine declared it “the revolution that will affect everybody.” Others likened it to a “tidal wave” or proclaimed the “world split open”. This Fall 2019 Honors College course introduced students to historical research and writing by focusing on women and the gender revolution at Purdue University. As we moved from Baby Boomers to Generation Z, we considered the social, political, economic, and cultural dynamics of the gender revolution for women students, faculty, and staff at Purdue since the 1940s.

     We investigated this still unknown and unwritten history using the holdings of the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. These include club and organizational records, printed publications such as the Debris and the Purdue Exponent, personal collections, photographs and films, administrative files, course catalogs and syllabi, interviews and oral histories, and material culture sources.

     Guided by Nancy Gabin, Associate Professor of History, and Katey Watson, the France A. Córdova Archivist, students pursued an array of topics. Among them were: the changing character of student life; women’s involvement in protest and political activism; women’s transformative relationship to sports and athletics; the consequences of Title IX for all academic programs; the integration of women as students and as faculty into male-dominated disciplines; the development of gender-focused curricula and research and the advent of programs such as Women’s Studies; and changing gender roles and relations throughout the university. Our research took us back to the 1940s and 1950s and brought us all the way to the present.