Unpacking the History of Higher Education

Histories of higher education offer students and teachers opportunities to study political, social, and cultural history in particularly engaging ways. This module introduces the use of college and university digital archives to capture the rich histories of women’s sports, LGBTQ+ student experiences, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions. It also includes a classroom teaching activity that uses campus historical markers to help students better understand the processes and contestations of historical commemoration. Contributors to the module were all participants in a 2024 National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute on higher education history that used digital archives to explore issues such as student activism, the legacies of slavery, internationalization, gender and sexuality, and the experiences of incarcerated students. A photograph of the Smith College 1897 basketball team, oral history interviews with the Virginia Tech Gay Student Alliance founders, and a 1976 newspaper published by a Mexican American student organization at the University of Texas at San Antonio—these engaging historical sources, along with many more, can be found in university and college digital archives across the US. These valuable resources, however, remain largely unexplored. The histories they tell are immediate and relevant to students attending these institutions today, providing a chance to see themselves (or not) in the archives.

Alliance · Basketball · Endowment · Higher education · Ivory tower · Newspaper · Oral history · Academic Freedom and Politics · Higher Education Governance and Development