In honor of its 150th anniversary, over the past year Wellesley College has celebrated the people and traditions that make up its history and also reflected on how that history will be carried forward. That sense of rediscovery, of finding oneself in Wellesley’s past and seeing one’s place in its future, is at the very heart of the College’s 150th Community Fund. The fund supports creative projects produced by members of the Wellesley community that document, honor, and interrogate Wellesley’s past and present. Though these projects take many forms and span various disciplines and media, they all bring Wellesley’s history to life.
“The constellation of all the projects—that is the essence of Wellesley,” says Ines Maturana Sendoya, associate dean of students for inclusion and engagement. That “constellation” includes a bilingual symposium on the future of art and museums at Wellesley, a film festival celebrating alumnae in entertainment, and much more. The unifying thread is that the projects are created by students, faculty, staff, and alumnae, who all contribute their own perspectives and creativity—precisely the people who should be telling Wellesley’s story, Sendoya says.
We spoke with some of the fund grantees to better understand how their projects came to life, and what they reveal about Wellesley’s history.
Telling the cultural houses’ history in comic form
One project is a graphic novel that investigates the origins and evolution of the College’s cultural houses: Harambee, Acorns, and Slater.
The project began with intensive archival research by Marilla Malone ’28, who says she combed through “pages and pages” of records, interviews, notes, and historical documents to construct the comprehensive foundation upon which the rest of the project would depend. The challenge, Malone says, was “figuring out how to tell that story in an accurate and representative way.” Genaiya Stephens ’27 then used that research to write a cohesive narrative script that could later be illustrated. Condensing the history in a manner that made the message “still honest but also digestible” was difficult, Stephens says.
Now, student artists have turned that story into a graphic novel, copies of which will be available to the larger Wellesley community. Beyond the format, this undertaking itself signals an important theme throughout Wellesley’s history: student activism. Cultural houses emerged through persistent student advocacy and continue to progress by way of community effort.
“Students really have made such a difference at Wellesley,” reflects Avery Batsimm, program coordinator for the Office of Intercultural Education. “When students, staff, and faculty come together, amazing things happen.”
For participants, the project is also about making the history of the houses more visible (literally). “I hope it becomes more common knowledge,” Stephens says. “There’s so much behind these spaces that people don’t always see.”
Painting a picture of Wellesley in 150 words
Some Community Fund projects focus on the everyday moments that are just as significant as the larger historical events that have unfolded over Wellesley’s existence. Inspired by a global “city in 100 words” model started in Santiago, Chile, Julie Walsh, Whitehead Associate Professor of Critical Thought and associate professor of philosophy, adapted a version for Wellesley. Wellesley in 150 invited students and alums to write 150-word reflections on their experiences at the College. “No story is too small to be meaningful,” says Walsh. “They’re about moments—little moments—that people carry with them.”
Nyna Cole ’28 is now helping turn those stories into illustrated prints and a physical book. The project became unexpectedly and wonderfully personal for her when she came across her great-great-aunt’s scrapbook, dated 1914, in Wellesley’s digital archives. Cole was aware that her relative had attended Wellesley, but seeing a record of her memories firsthand changed Cole’s perception. “It was this beautiful moment,” she remembers. “Suddenly there was this connection.”
The project focuses jointly on preservation and ease of access, with plans for digital and physical versions that can be shared widely and hopefully archived for future generations.
“I think [working on this project] gives you a sense of ownership,” Cole says, “and a sense of responsibility for what comes next.”
Recording the hidden histories of Wellesley’s queer past
For many involved in the project Our Queer Stories, a digital timeline and oral history of Wellesley’s queer and trans community, the work began with uncovering absent details. “There’s just been so much secrecy around people’s identity,” says Todd Nordgren, director of LGBTQ+ Programs and Services, likening it to a “great unrecorded history.”
The project brings together archival research and interviews with alums to document LGBTQ+ life at Wellesley across its 150 years. Instead of producing a simple storyline, the team has fully embraced the complexity of the history. “We’re not telling a story of victories [or challenges],” Nordgren says—indeed, the story is “both of those things all the time.”
Students who worked on the project have encountered this notion firsthand. Kaya Perce ’26, who researched collections in the Wellesley College Archives, notes that institutional records tend to represent administrative perspectives, making it difficult to fully capture students’ authentic experiences. “A lot of the files [reflected] things that [the administration] viewed as a problem,” she says, and not necessarily what students were actually experiencing, leaving much of Wellesley’s queer story undiscussed. Oral histories helped fill in those blanks with more personal accounts.
Avery Finley ’28, an oral historian for the project, says conducting interviews created a strong sense of unity across generations of Wellesley students. “It was really cool to talk to former students who had lived in the same dorm as me, but 40 years ago,” she says. “There’s a big feeling of being seen that comes from realizing you’re part of a much longer history.”
Meanwhile, for Batsimm, who helped oversee the project as program coordinator for LGBTQ+ Programs and Services, that sensation of discovery reached far beyond the students themselves. People working quite closely on the project learned new histories and unearthed archival materials and testimonies that had long been unrecognized. The depth and breadth of queer and trans history at Wellesley is incredibly vast; team members were “consistently finding things [they] had no idea about,” notes Batsimm, such as previously unknown relationships unearthed in letters. The ultimate goal, Batsimm says, is to show that queer students have always been part of the College’s community: The project spans the full 150 years and examines recent stories as well as earlier ones that are often overlooked.
Nordgren says the project shows that “there have been LGBTQ+ people at Wellesley since the beginning, and that they’re a central part of our community.”
All of the 150th community fund projects will eventually become part of Wellesley’s Archives themselves, creating another layer of Wellesley waiting to be discovered and giving future students a window into what the College was and what it aspired to be.
“When you have the perspective of a longer history, you’re able to place yourself in it,” Nordgren says, “and that feels empowering.”
The complete list of community funded projects:
To Make a Difference in the World: the Wellesley Landscape at 150
Imagining Museums: The Next 150 Years of Stewarding Art at Wellesley
Founding Members of Wellesley: Visual History Preservation
Our Queer Stories: A Digital Timeline of LGBTQ+ History at Wellesley
Sesquicentennial Film Festival
Cultural Houses at Wellesley College: A History
Written By Wellesley: Composers and Lyricists Throughout the Ages
