From the Archives to the Tower

Abstract

Katharine Banham was a pioneer. Just as Lewis and Clark ventured into the unknown West, she blindly went where few women had gone before – academia. With no map to follow, she blazed her own trail, documenting her route – complete with numerous detours – in the process. Analysis of this documentation would function as the manual for future brave women, to whom she provided tools to both encourage and assuage their intellectual journey through higher education. At a time when we are eliciting all resources possible to achieve the goal of “a world of full equality and respect for all” as stated by President Brodhead, it seems appropriate to resurrect Katharine Banham’s experience from the Archives to the forefront. For, we can learn a great deal about both her as a person and Duke as an institution from the obstacles she overcame, the programs she instituted, and the type of individual she was.