This Week’s Curator’s Talk: The World Wars and their Impact on Vanderbilt

Join us in the Special Collections Library from 11:15am-12:00pm every Wednesday morning during this semester for fascinating talks led by library librarians, archivists, and curators. To see the full series, click here.

This week’s talk: The World Wars and their Impact on Vanderbilt

Highlights of the Vandy Goes to War exhibition will be the focus of this talk given by Sara Sterkenburg. In the early months of 1917, an influx of students came to Vanderbilt to enter the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.) aiming to join the war effort. With their enrollment came much-needed funding for campus infrastructure, fueling a building boom that more than doubled the size of campus by the 1940s. Come to hear details about how mobilization for the war impacted the lives of students, faculty, and alumni, and how these times paved the way for the university we know today.

“Salvage for Victory Program,” advertisement, circa 1943-1945; World War II Poster Collection

[WWI Cadets in Band Performing during Football Game]; photograph, circa 1917-1918; Edward East Barthell Lantern Slide Collection
[Two Nurses from the 300th Medical Unit]; photograph, circa 1942-1945; 300th General Hospital Unit Collection

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