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Title:
  • Brown : the history of an idea / Ted Widmer.
Call No:
  • LD638
  • .W54
Summary note:
  • "Founded in 1636, essentially as a refuge for outcasts from Massachusetts, the colony of Rhode Island was unusually open-minded, leading Massachusetts Puritan Cotton Mather to refer to it as "the latrina [or sewer] of New England." The sixth of the Ivy League universities to be founded, in 1764, Brown accepted students early on regardless of religious affiliation, and in 1969 adopted a student-proposed "New Curriculum," allowing students to structure their education with relative freedom. Over the last two and a half centuries, the university and its graduates have played a notable role in numerous defining moments in the American story, from the legacy of slavery (one of the founding Brown brothers was a leading abolitionist, the other an "ardent defender and slave trader"), to the Industrial Revolution and education reform. Although there are plenty of prominent names--among them Horace Mann, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Janet Yellen, and Edwidge Danticat--woven throughout, Widmer's is a more ambitious account that weaves its threads into a variegated history of how a university can both mirror and spur the wider culture around it." -- Publisher's description
Subjects:
Author:
Physical Description:
  • 320 pages :
  • illustrations (some color), color maps ;
  • 22 cm
Notes:
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
  • Foreword by President Christina H. Paxson -- Brown begins -- Brown, baptized -- Bookends -- Dance of the brownies -- The Brown decades.
  • "Founded in 1636, essentially as a refuge for outcasts from Massachusetts, the colony of Rhode Island was unusually open-minded, leading Massachusetts Puritan Cotton Mather to refer to it as "the latrina [or sewer] of New England." The sixth of the Ivy League universities to be founded, in 1764, Brown accepted students early on regardless of religious affiliation, and in 1969 adopted a student-proposed "New Curriculum," allowing students to structure their education with relative freedom. Over the last two and a half centuries, the university and its graduates have played a notable role in numerous defining moments in the American story, from the legacy of slavery (one of the founding Brown brothers was a leading abolitionist, the other an "ardent defender and slave trader"), to the Industrial Revolution and education reform. Although there are plenty of prominent names--among them Horace Mann, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Janet Yellen, and Edwidge Danticat--woven throughout, Widmer's is a more ambitious account that weaves its threads into a variegated history of how a university can both mirror and spur the wider culture around it." -- Publisher's description
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