Women’s and Gender Studies Public History Project Archived in the Atkins Library

A public history project about the Women’s and Gender Studies program at UNC Charlotte has been preserved in the J. Murrey Atkins Library and is now publicly available in the Goldmine archives.

The Women’s and Gender Studies program (WGST) celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2024. To mark that milestone, the project captured the history of the program as told through the people that helped develop it. 

Sonya Ramsey, Ph.D. is a professor of history and currently the acting chair of the Department of History, and serves as the director of the WGST program, so recording the origins of the program was an important part of honoring the founder, English and African American and African Studies Professor, Ann Carver.

“Since there was no concentrated Women’s and Gender Studies collection at Atkins Library, I wanted to commemorate WGST’s legacy by chronicling and archiving its history and invest in the program’s future by providing undergraduate minors and graduate certificate students valuable research and artistic opportunities,” said Ramsey. 

Guided by Ramsey, two students undertook the project to record the stories of prominent UNC Charlotte faculty and students who were influential to the growth of the program, and the University itself. 

Staci Batchelor and J. Joy Davis, WGST graduate certificate students at the time, served as the inaugural Ann Carver/Susan Cloninger Graduate Student Researchers and constructed the archive. They conducted interviews to record oral histories, developed a physical exhibit, created a documentary and a digital magazine and presented their research at two public WGST Anniversary events.
The documentary and the zine translate a variety of existing archival materials and oral history interviews into an accessible history of the WGST program, which is part of the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies in the College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences.

Batchelor, a Public History master’s degree student and an administrative support associate in the Department of Sociology, was awarded the National Council on Public History’s Student Project Award earlier this year for the zine she created.

The award recognized an “outstanding public history student project initiated as academic coursework and implemented and recognized beyond the classroom for its contribution to the field of public history.” 

The interdisciplinary project has continued collaborations and expanded in scope since the anniversary last year.

“Collaborating with Atkins Library’s Adreonna Bennett, Dawn Schmitz, Katie Howell, and Tina Wright, as well as Tina Shull, the former director of the Public History Program, was such an enriching experience,” said Ramsey. “WGST has expanded the purpose of the 40th Anniversary Project to develop an archival collection and conduct oral histories focusing on the unique history of women’s leadership at UNC Charlotte from the 1960s to the present. This has been possible with the work of returning graduate researcher, Staci Bachelor and new public history graduate student, Nya Williams.”

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Sonya Ramsey wishes to gratefully acknowledge the Interdisciplinary Studies Office, an internal grant, and the generosity of UNC Charlotte and WGST alum, Susan Cloninger, Ph.D. for the support that made this project possible.