Summer School for Women Workers Centennial

The curator reflects.

The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry welcomed more than a thousand factory workers and manual laborers to the College between 1921 and 1938. The program provided a two-month retreat to study economic theory but also subjects, such as literature, astronomy, and music, to enrich life outside the workplace. While classroom lectures provided a liberal-arts context for the labor movement and the skills necessary for self-advocating in the workplace, alumnae remembered their first experience of life away from the smog and cramped confines of cities and mills.

With the centennial of the founding of the school coming up this spring, Special Collections has worked with the President’s Office and the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research to produce a new exhibition on the history of the school and the women who attended. Beck Morawski ’21, began working on the project last summer and will complete the online exhibition in time for the spring 2021 celebration. Her research was made more challenging by the need to do all of the summer work remotely, but fortunately important resources for the research are available online, including several hundred photographs; the memoirs of the school’s founding director, Hilda Worthington Smith; the Ph.D. dissertation on the school by Rita Rubinstein Heller ’59; and the documentary "The Women of Summer: the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921–1938" that Heller co-produced in 1986.

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The Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries provides critical support for internships, exhibitions, programs, and special projects.

To learn more and become a member, see the Friends website.

"The Rita Rubinstein Heller ’59 collection on the Summer School for Women Workers includes student poetry, personal correspondence, and transcriptions of oral history interviews from the 1980s. I was particularly drawn to the former students’ descriptions of campus life, speaking vividly of the power of Bryn Mawr 50 years after they had gone back to their jobs. For most, this was their first time living and working in spaces like the elaborately designed dorms and the castle-like academic buildings. The chance to play baseball and field hockey on the vast greens and to indulge in recreation during the day was also new for many.

"Re-experiencing these first impressions reminded me how special our community is and how transformative setting foot on campus can be. In this moment, when students connect with Bryn Mawr from across the globe, it can be hard to recall the spark that brings us together as an institution. The accounts of the students of the Summer School point out what it means to be a Bryn Mawr student—our education consists not just of classroom lessons but also of our experiences together as a community exploring and navigating the unfamiliar together." —Beck Morawski ’21