Collection Development Policy: Gender Studies
  • Subject Librarian(s):
    Patricia Figueroa

  • Departmental Library Representative (DLR):
    Elizabeth Weed

  • Description of the Academic Program | Home Page
    The Pembroke Center was established in 1981 as a research center on gender. The first students concentrating in Women's Studies graduated in 1983. In 2000-2001, the concentration took the name "Gender Studies" in order to represent more accurately the analytical focus of the program. The Center encourages the development of gender studies courses across various departments to serve the interests of non-concentrators as well as concentrators. It sponsors a range of programs and activities:

    • A major research program that funds Postdoctoral Fellows in residence, Faculty Research Fellows, and Graduate Research Fellows.
    • Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, published three times a year by Indiana University Press.
    • Instructional programs, including the undergraduate concentration in Gender Studies.
    • The Pembroke Associates, an alumni organization of more than five hundred members that supports the work of the Center through fundraising and programming
    • The Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives, housed at the John Hay Library.


    Gender Studies is an interdepartmental concentration with two tracks: Humanities and Social Sciences. For information on requirements visit the Pembroke Center's Instructional Program



  • Overview of the Collection
    The library collections for Gender Studies include an estimated 50,000 titles of which some 114 are currently-received serials. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the collection it is difficult to calculate the exact number of materials it holds. The L C class HQ, covering the areas of Family, Gender, and Sexuality, contains 13,749 titles. Most items are housed in the Rockefeller Library, however Special Collections at the John Hay Library maintains a number of discrete collections and archives pertaini ng to women and gay and lesbian actors and writers (see section for Special Collections and Archives).

  • General Collecting Guidelines
    Gender Studies at the Brown University Library is a research collection of international scope supporting the curricular and research needs of faculty, students, visiting scholars, and researchers from the Pembroke Center and other academic units at Brown University. The collection holds resources that examine the critical theory, and historical and contemporary experiences of heterosexual women and men, as well as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons. The materials selected should help us ers explore cultural constructions of gender through class, age, and race, from antiquity to the present.

    Brown University users employ a wide range of primary and secondary materials as points of inquiry into gender issues. Since the Undergraduate Concentration in Gender Studies is both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, the collection supports the study of gender as a discrete subject as well as an overlapping topic of various academic disciplines particularly in the humanities and social sciences. Within the social sciences, sociology is most intensely collected. Feminist biography, history, and his toriography are of particular interest in the humanities.

    Television, film and dance theory and history, as well as literature materials are selected by the English/Comparative Literature/Theater, Speech and Dance/Modern Culture and Media selector. Art, Architecture and Photography materials are selected by the Curator of the Art Slide Library, though some selection may be shared with Gender Studies. Both the Religion and Gender Studies selectors select gender-related religion materials. Alternate selectors may manage other gender-related subjects. For more details on the selection of Gender Studies materials refer to the subject breakdown table below. The table provides current and desired collecting levels according to gender-related topics. Alternate selectors are given when appropriate.

  • Detailed Subject Breakdown

  • Specific Collecting Guidelines
    • Language: The primary language is English, with special attention given to pertinent major works in Western European languages.
    • Chronological Span: Antiquity to the present.
    • Imprint Date: The collection is primarily a circulating collection, limiting its acquisitions to scholarly resources published after 1800. Original manuscripts, materials published before 1800, and those considered valuable or requiring special handling are housed in Special Collections at the John Hay Library where they do not circulate.
    • Geographical Range: The collection poses no geographical restrictions.
    • Types of Material Included: Circulating monographs are the main component of the Gender Studies collection, however other materials such as serials, non-circulating monographs, audiovisual and electronic resources are also collected.
    • Formats: The library acquires materials in all formats, with the exception of 8mm in the case of audiovisual items. The bulk of the collection is in print-based (monographs and serials), however microfilm is still purchased for periodical archives, pamphlet collections and pre-twentieth century publications. Materials in electronic formats such as CD-ROM, DVD, DVD-ROM and online access are acquired according to their licensing agreements and their compatibility with the library's system. Audiovisual materials are purchased on video, or preferably DVD format. Although the Media Services Laboratory is equipped with VCRs and DVD players that can play and copy films produced with the PAL system, the NTSC system is highly preferred. All videos purchased for this collection are housed at Media Services in the Sciences Library. Music CDs are for the most part purchased by the Music Librarian and are housed at the Orwig Music Library
    • Excluded: For audio-visual and networked resources used for teaching and learning the French language, consult the Center for Language Studies collections (CLS).


  • Special Collections
    • Brown University Archives
      The University Archives, located at the John Hay Library, are the repository of official records of Brown University, University publications, theses and dissertations, and printed, manuscript, graphic, and audiovisual material about Brown. You are invited to use the Archives by signing the visitor's register and providing a Brown identification card or other positive identification.

      • Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives
        The Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives focuses on twentieth-century Brown and Rhode Island women and their organizations. The history of women at Brown can be studied in documents concerning the admission of women in 1891 and the administration of the Women's College, named in 1928 Pembroke College, which merged with Brown in 1971. There are also copies of the "Pembroke Record", the college newspaper (1922-1970); the "Sepiad", a student literary and news periodical of the women students (1901-1932); the "Brun Mael", the women's yearbook (1909-1970); and the "Pembroke Alumna" (1928-1970). There are collections of correspondence of women students, scrapbooks kept by women students full of memorabilia of their college lives, and oral histories on cassette tapes of Pembroke alumnae. "The Research Guide to the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives" (1989) provides detailed information about women's studies resources in the Archives and in other special collections.

    • Martha Dickinson Bianchi Collection
      Consists of the papers of the family of Emily Dickinson, along with the 3,000 volume family library from "The Evergreens," the Dickinson home in Amherst Massachusetts; supplemented by gifts from Barton St. Armand and George Monteiro, of additional items from the same source.

    • Gay and Lesbian Literature Collections

      • Katzoff Collection
        This 1,500-volume collection consists primarily of literary works relating to gays and lesbians, with a small component of history and sociology; most are U.S. publications. The core of the Collection is the gift of books, primarily novels dating from the 1970s and 1980s, received in 1991 from the estate of Richard Katzoff, supplemented by the library and personal writings of John Preston, journalist, author and editor of gay literature (see below for Preston's papers). In addition, the Collection includes the publications of Larry Townsend (sadomasochistic fiction and pictorial erotica), many books from the library of Edmund White, an extensive collection of contemporary lesbian fiction, and many other smaller donations of gay and lesbian writings. Materials continue to be added to the Collection by gift and purchase; an endowment has been established for that purpose by the Katzoff family. The more recent acquisitions include a 30,000-item collection of gay pulp fiction dating primarily from the 1950s and 1960s.
      • Preston Archive
        Personal and professional correspondence including letters from friends, other writers, and groups whose focus is gay life and rights. Original typescripts of his writings; photographs; magazines with articles he authored; clippings; books written by Preston and others.
      • Gay Men's Pulp Fiction
        A collection of over 4,500 volumes of gay men's pulp fiction.
      • Scott O'Hara Papers
        Literary and personal papers, 1979-1998, of Scott O'Hara (1961-1998), pornographic film actor, author, magazine publisher, also containing publications that include material by or about him. Provisional inventory
      • James Jackson Bequest
        Approximately 1500 titles in the area of gay/lesbian literature, much of it dating from the pre-Stonewall era. The Jackson Collection contains many titles not owned my Brown and virtually all are in very good condition and retain their dust jackets. There are a quite a few lesbian-related titles which fills in a gap in our existing holdings and quite a few gay-related science fiction and fantasy titles which complement one of existing collection strengths. Quite a few of the books are signed or inscribed, this being particularly true of the post-Stonewall titles.

    • Lamont Collection
      Originally the working library of Brown Professor of Rhetoric Hammond Lamont. The principal focus of the collection is 18th and 19th century English literature with an emphasis on prose. Notable for its novels published between 1760-1840, particularly those by women writers and over 100 17th and 18th century tracts by Jeremy Collier and William Prynne, among others, exhorting against the pernicious moral influence of the stage.

    • The Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays The Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays is composed of approximately 250,000 volumes of American and Canadian poetry, plays, and vocal music dating from 1609 to the present day. It is perhaps the largest and most comprehensive collection of its kind in any research library. There are extensive collections on Walt Whitman, women's writings, and gay and lesbian literature.


  • Selected List of Key Internet Resources

    • The National Council for Research on Women
      The National Council for Research on Women, founded in 1981, is a working alliance of 92 women's research and policy centers, more than 3,000 affiliates and a network of over 200 international centers. NCRW's mission is to enhance the connections among research, policy analysis, advocacy, and innovative programming on behalf of women and girls.

    • WSSLinks: Women and Gender Studies Web Sites
      The purpose of WSSLinks is to provide access to a wide range of resources in support of Gender Studies (though mostly Women's Studies). It was developed and is currently maintained by the Women's Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

    • Women's Studies (R)Esources on the Web
      List of women's studies links on the Web, created and maintained by the Duke University Center for Women's History and Culture.

    • Women's Studies Online Resources
      List of women's studies links on the Web, created and updated by Joan Korenman at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

    • The Lesbian and Gay Archives Roundtable of the Society of American Archivists
      A formal and comprehensive guide to primary source material relating to the history and culture of lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered people held by repositories in North America.

Illustration: Blue beard; or The fatal effects of curiosity and disobedience... , Philadelphia: Wm. Charles, 1815, Dorr Collection V.79, John Hay Library.