Bulletins of Wellesley College

The other day, my friend who works at the Registrars office told me they were cleaning out old course catalogs. I found catalogs & took one from each decade starting from the 1940s. I wonder how other students felt about registration. Registration for courses seem to always creep up on me now. My first year at Wellesley, I treated the 2011 Course Catalog as someone might The Bible. Thousands of potential schedules were scribbled on the side as I prepared for R Day. This past year, I had to be reminded by my friends about the impending doom of registration. Unfortunately I don't have alums at my disposal to interview about course registration but I do have the books!

1942 (Catalog or Catalogue?)

1959-1960

1961-62 

1968-1969 (seems like the 60s were quite boring compared to the 70s!)

1973-74 - the 70s wins for most creative catalogs

1975-1976 (school of flowers & sun)

1978 (my personal favorite - we should go back to this cover)

1980-81 (Notice how everyone looks so surprised! Except for that statue.)

1984-1985 (Indoor fun!)

1986-87 - Second favorite. I wonder if that is a student or they paid a model... Great hair though!

1996-97 (anyone else think this looks like a Marriot Ad?)

2000-2001

2006 & hasn't changed much since!

I love how most of the course catalog/catalogues' featured photos of students studying outside and enjoying the nice New England weather. You'd think since we're already at Wellesley, the course catalog/catalogue's would speak true to our real lives and have pictures of dining halls & libraries. I guess the impending doom of finals & midterms shouldn't be on our minds while we are picking courses... Maybe a scarier course catalog would encourage us to pick lighter course loads!

Being an English major, my interest was in comparing whether the English courses had changed at all these past 70 years! To my surprise, not really.

1942: 101: English Literature of The Renaissance for Six Hours! How many points for Gryffindor though?

1959-1960: 100 is now Language, Literature, and the Individual but does not count towards a major in English.

1961-1962: English 100 - Style & Organization - The Birth of WRIT 125 perhaps?

1975: We can see the development of what is now a mixture of Critical Interpretation and WRIT 125

1978: Critical Interpretation is born! And remains the same for almost 30+ years!

1980-81: Still a lot of the same English department at Wellesley - impressive.

"A course designed to increase power and skill in critical interpretation by the detailed reading of poems"

"A course designed to increase power and skill in critical interpretation by the detailed reading of individual works"

*This is the only Critical Interpretation that says individual works.

"A course designed to increase power and skill in critical interpretation by the detailed reading of poems"

"A course designed to increase power and skill in critical interpretation by the detailed reading of poems"

"A course designed to increase power and skill in critical interpretation by the detailed reading of poems..."

After Critical Interpretation is created, not much changes but the writing that follows: - A course designed to increase power and skill in critical interpretation by the detailed reading of poems." I'm 95% sure the description for the English course on Milton has not changed but the thought of flipping and reading 10 different descriptions of Milton almost bored me to death! (Kidding! Kind of.) Now I do realize that most people don't care about whether or not the English courses have changed but hopefully what I found next will be of interest!

Who needs a B.A when you can have a M.S degree in Hygiene and Physical Education! From the 1942 Course Catalog.

Just make sure you have good posture before you become a master of hygiene & physical education. I wonder if Wellesley women competed for the best posture grade. I can imagine it now, "What did you get for your posture requirement?" From the 1942 Course Catalog.

Imagine having required P.E classes you have to take. I thoroughly enjoy having the option of taking archery & badmitton instead of zumba and dance. Although I do believe learning the appropriate technique of modern dance would greatly benefit my balance & life skills. I imagine my entertainment skills would be out of this world.  From the 1942 Course Catalog.

With the help of instagram (I promise this is the only page I instagrammed) , I highlighted the most interesting section of the 1942 Course Catalog.

 

If any 2016ers are reading this, good luck battling the course catalog! I sure had a lot of fun going through old ones and I always have fun looking at the newest one.