Common Hour: “College certainly has been grand this year”

“College certainly has been grand this year”: The Letters of Helen Carnell Eden, Wilson Class of 1929

Also part of Women’s History Month Lecture Series Sesquicentennial Edition

The 1920s was an exciting, nay, bold decade in Wilson’s history and Helen Eden’s letters provide us with one student’s experience of it. With an almost ethnographic awareness, Helen’s letters home to her parents document the College’s festive social life, her academic experience, and her growing attachment to Wilson. This decade also saw young people rejecting older ideals about feminine behavior and Dr. Ackerman will look at ways the tension between old and new is revealed in the observations of this smart (and smart-mouthed) young woman from West Philadelphia

Dr. Kay Ackerman is Associate Professor of History at Wilson College. She has received awards from the NEH Institutes on American Material Culture and World History as well as the NYU Institute on The Civil War in Global Context.