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New Book by Historian Rosalind Rosenberg Outlines How the Women of Barnard and Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sexual Identity and Politics
 The evolution of our thinking on gender, sexual identity and politics can be traced back more than 100 years ago to a struggle by Barnard and Columbia women to gain access to higher education, according to Changing the Subject, a new book by Barnard historian Rosalind Rosenberg.
She argues that Barnard and Columbia women, by surmounting a series of obstacles that advanced women's access to higher education, played a key role in the evolution of the university. At the same time, these women challenged prevailing ideas about masculinity, femininity and sexual identity, and questioned accepted views about ethnicity, races and rights.
Although the subtitle of the book is "How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics," Rosenberg says that "it's a story that can't be told without attention to the Barnard angle."
"Barnard was unique among colleges affiliated with research universities in having its own faculty," she says. The faculty quickly became committed to preparing their students for higher education opportunities that were opening up. And, adds Rosenberg, "because the faculty was committed to this, Barnard sent more women on to get PhDs in 1920-1970 than any other college its size."
Rosenberg will give a lecture on the book on Wednesday, November 3 at 6 p.m. at the Teatro at the Italian Academy, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue.
Ironically, Barnard had its own faculty because John W. Burguess, the head of graduate faculty of political science at Columbia in the 1890s, did everything he could to dissuade his colleagues from teaching at Barnard. Having no other recourse, Barnard won permission of the Columbia Board to hire its own faculty.
"So he created the very thing he most feared," she says, "the conditions under which Columbia would be the leader of educating women in higher education."
And, the book explains, the effects rippled from there. Those Columbia and Barnard graduates, having changed the terms of discussion on a local level, contributed to a more expansive understanding of governmental responsibility and the rise of modern feminism. Sociologist Elsie Clews Parsons (BC, 1896, CU 1897, 1899) led the way by sending her students into the city's immigrant neighborhoods to study housing, health, and working conditions, while exhorting them to fight for sexual freedom, birth control, and the right to vote. Through her work and that of the many women who followed, critical elements of American welfare policy and modern feminism took shape.
Rosenberg was inspired to write the book to coincide with Columbia's 250 th anniversary, this year. She has been teaching at Barnard since 1984, and next semester she will teach "American Women in the 20 th Century" and "The 14 th Amendment and Its Uses." The chair of the American Studies Program, Rosenberg also administers, woth Dean Vivian Taylor, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, which encourages minority students, and others with a demonstrated commitment to racial diversity, to pursue academic careers.
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