Will Treece

What follows is a meandering summary of my thesis research, mainly focusing on trends in Swarthmore’s curriculum relating to American topics until 1950, but with stops along the way to look at President Aydelotte's disdain for non-Honors students and an Economics professor

Before Worthstock, the LSE, or even Olde Club, there was the Swarthmore Folk Festival. For a few decades, Swarthmore became the center of the folk music world for one spring weekend each year.

In Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom, protagonist Patty Berglund visits her daughter Jessica at her Philadelphia-area liberal arts college on Parents’ Weekend. There are a number of clues that Jessica attends Swarthmore, Franzen’s alma mater. Swarthmore, indeed, plays a prominent role throughout

Our oldest campus newspaper was first published in 1881, rising from the ashes of the Great Fire of Parrish. In its earliest form, the Phoenix was more of a literary journal than a newspaper as we think of it today.

It’s not uncommon for Swarthmore students today to make plans for a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. Yet it’s a little-known secret of Swarthmore history that once upon a time, Swarthmore students were actually forced to make these decisions.