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Arthur P. Dudden papers
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This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Bryn Mawr College. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
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Arthur Power Dudden was born October 26, 1921, in Cleveland, Ohio to Arthur and Kathleen (Bray) Dudden. Dudden earned a bachelor's degree in 1942 from Wayne State University. Upon graduation, Dudden enlisted in the Navy where he served as an Aviation Machinist Mate for Navy blimps that patrolled areas in the North Atlantic and North Africa.
Upon the completion of his Naval service, Dudden came back to the U.S. and enrolled in graduate school at the University of Michigan. He earned an M.A. in 1947 and a PhD in History in 1950. While working towards his doctorate, Dudden worked as a Teaching Fellow from 1947 to 1948 and then as a University Fellow from 1948 to 1950.
Prior to the conferral of his PhD, Dudden was hired by Helen Taft Manning to teach in Bryn Mawr's History department beginning in the fall of 1950. Dudden became an associate professor of History in 1956, chaired the History department from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1989, and was appointed the Fairbank Professor in the Humanities in 1989. Throughout his time at the College, Dudden was a member of faculty committees for various College initiatives and events, including for the Woodrow Wilson and the World of Today conference (1956), the Black Studies program, and the Faculty show, of which he was also a participant. In 1992, Dudden retired and was named Professor Emeritus of History and the Fairbank Professor Emeritus in the Humanities. Dudden continued to teach at the College on a part-time basis as the Katharine McBride Professor in History from 1992 to the 1994 fall semester.
In 1959, Dudden was awarded a Fulbright grant and spent a year as a Fulbright Research Scholar in Copenhagen, Denmark conducting research for a book on Joseph Fels. Dudden's connection to the Fulbright program continued later in his life as he was the founding president of the Fulbright Alumni Association in 1976, he edited The Fulbright Experience in 1987, and he became a Fulbright Lecturer in Western Europe in 1992.
Dudden also published, edited, and compiled various works related to his research interests in American Studies. While Dudden's early research and publications focused on the figures of Woodrow Wilson and Joseph Fels, much of his research and subsequent publications focused on American political humor. He wrote and edited various articles, chapters, and books on the subject, including The Assault of Laughter: A Treasury of American Political Humor, Pardon Us, Mr. President! American Humor on Politics, and "The Record of American Humor" in a special 1985 issue of American Quarterly. As he neared retirement from Bryn Mawr Dudden's research focused on the Pacific basin and America's history of involvement and influence in the region; Dudden went on to publish various articles and books on the subject after his retirement, including The American Pacific from the Old China Trade to the Present. Dudden also wrote teacher- and student-oriented guides to supplement and help teachers and students work through two major History textbooks of the time, The American Republic and The United States. In addition to his publication work, Dudden was a member of the American Historical Association (AHA) and acted as the treasurer and executive secretary of the American Studies Association (ASA). The ASA awarded Dudden the Bode-Pearson Award in 1991 to honor his contributions to the field of American Studies.
Dudden died on October 14, 2009.
Bibliography
The College News, Bryn Mawr Special Collections.
The Bryn Mawr-Haverford College News, Bryn Mawr Special Collections.
Dudden, Arthur. BMC-3H. Faculty Biography files, Bryn Mawr Special Collections, Bryn Mawr, PA.
Bryn Mawr College Calendars, Bryn Mawr Special Collections.
Peterson, Barbara Bennett, "Arthur Power Dudden (1921-2009)," American Historical Association. October 1, 2010. https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/arthur-power-dudden-1921-2009-october-2010/.
The Arthur P. Dudden papers contain the professional papers of Arthur Dudden, History professor and department chair at Bryn Mawr College. The papers span from 1949 to 1995 with the bulk of materials dated between 1966 and 1991. The bulk of the papers consists of course materials used in undergraduate courses, undergraduate conferences, and graduate seminars Dudden taught while at BMC, such as syllabi, lecture notes, readings, class rosters, and student assignment topic lists. The papers also include materials related to larger curriculum and course developments in the History department and miscellaneous activities, events, and interactions Dudden was involved in outside of his immediate responsibilities in BMC's History department. Dudden's papers primarily offer insight into the content, structure, assignments, and management of Dudden-taught courses and highlight the developments to Bryn Mawr's History curriculum in the latter part of the twentieth century.
The papers are arranged into three series: "Series I: Course Materials, 1949-1991," "Series II: History Department Materials, 1954-1991," and "Series III: Miscellaneous, 1977-1995."
"Series I: Course Materials," is the largest series of the papers and include materials used to facilitate and manage Dudden's undergraduate classes and conferences and graduate seminars in the BMC History Department. Materials in this series date from 1949 to 1991 and consist of syllabi, lecture outlines, lecture notes, assignment instructions, exam questions, reading lists, bibliographies, photocopies of documents (the History department's term for primary sources) and course readings, newspaper clippings, rosters, grade charts, student work, Dudden's feedback, correspondence, memos, and printed publications and ephemera. With the exception of the survey courses, History 111 and 112, courses represented in this series focus on American History, predominately in the twentieth century; topics covered in upper-level courses commonly center around the experience of minority groups throughout U.S. history, progressive programs, and the impact of the U.S. in Southeast Asia. Represented the most among this series are materials for the survey course, History 111: Western Civilization, the upper-level course, History 303: Topics in the Recent History of the United States, and the senior conferences, both for the conferences arranged by the History department prior to the existence of a formal senior History majors course and for the formalized course, History 399.
Folders in this series are arranged by course, beginning with the 100-level undergraduate courses and conferences through the 400-level undergraduate courses and ending with the graduate seminars; materials for a Haverford class Dudden was involved with and an unidentified course about Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era are located after materials from identified BMC courses.
Please note that access to folders in this series with grade charts, student work, Dudden's handwritten feedback, correspondence, and memos that contain student grade information or information about a student's academic performance or accommodations is restricted under FERPA. All restricted folders have been placed at the end of the series.
"Series II: History Department Materials," consists of correspondence, memos, meeting minutes, course proposals, course listings and descriptions, evaluation questionnaires, a syllabus, and bulletins that were created or used by BMC's History Department in the development of the department's curriculum and courses or to advertise course offerings. Materials in this series date from 1954 to 1991, and the folders are arranged alphabetically by folder title.
Materials in "Series III: Miscellaneous" contain various materials not directly related to Dudden's teaching or department responsibilities at BMC. The materials in this series date between 1977 and 1995 and consist of correspondence, event schedules, reports, photocopies of articles and book chapters, printed publications, a lawsuit, and Dudden's writings. Materials in this series relate to events held at BMC, including the planning for the Delia Mares Television Conference and a speech Dudden gave at the 1981 BMC Reunion, BMC students' research and written work completed outside of BMC classes, and changes to BMC's tax exemption status in 1995. Other materials in this series not directly related to BMC include a piece Dudden wrote on American social history post-World War II, correspondence with outside scholars initiating conversations about a graduate seminar on the Spanish-American War, and a collection of Refugee Education Guides predominately for Southeast Asian refugees. Folders in this series are arranged alphabetically by folder title.
The Arthur Dudden papers are arranged into three series:
Series I: Course Materials, 1949-1991
Series II: History Department Materials, 1954-1982
Series III: Miscellaneous, 1977-1995
Series I is arranged numerically by course number beginning with the 100-level through the 400-level undergraduate courses and conferences and ending with the graduate seminars; materials from a Haverford course and an unidentified course are located at the end of the identified course, conference, or seminar folders. Series II and III are arranged alphabetically by folder title.
The Arthur P. Dudden papers were processed between November 2025 and March 2026 by Bethany Greenho, Processing Archivist for College Histories, with the assistance of two Special Collections student workers, Sophia Haarlow and Rachel Friedman. The five boxes that made up this collection contained materials in well-labeled, acidic folders that were often too large for the material inside of them. The original boxes were also acidic. From these observations it was decided to rehouse the entire collection in non-acidic boxes and non-acidic, better sized folders. This physical processing work was primarily undertaken by the students.
There was no overt intellectual or physical arrangement of the collection in its original five boxes. While originally thought to be a collection only of materials Dudden used to teach his courses, a full inventory of the collection identified folders of materials related to the development and evaluation of History courses, student's work outside of the classroom, and Dudden's interest in and involvement with activities related to the College at large and beyond. Given the scope of these folders the Processing Archivist determined the collection should have multiple series, one for all the course materials and two smaller ones for folders related to the work of the entire History department and for folders related to things outside of Dudden's classes. The choice to arrange the Course Materials series folders by course number stemmed from the arrangement of the folders in the original five boxes. While not perfect, many folders of materials pertaining to the same course number were grouped together or near each other within each box. The chronology of the folders was also checked, but it was clear that the folders were not arranged chronologically. Taken together, the Processing Archivist chose to see the imperfect physical groupings of folders by course numbers as Dudden's "original order" for the collection and, therefore, arrange the Course Materials series folders by course number from the lower-level undergraduate courses to the upper-level courses to the graduate seminars. The folders of materials that would go into the other two series were scattered throughout the original five boxes. This scatteredness suggested to the Processing Archivist that these folders did not have an "original order" that she could base an arrangement on; as such she decided that for such a small group of folders, it would be easiest to arrange the History Department Materials and Miscellaneous series alphabetically by folder title.
Dudden's labels on the original folders were, for most of the folders, accurate descriptions of the materials inside. These labels were largely retained on the new folders, particularly in the Course Materials series, while a handful of original labels received small edits for clarification purposes or to add detail. New titles were created for materials that were originally loose in a box and folders of materials whose content did not match the original title. Date information that was included in Dudden's original label was separated out on the new folders, including any of Dudden's semester designations; bulk dates were used as a way to retain Dudden's semester designations and, particularly with folders that contained materials from different versions of a given course, preserve information regarding the specific course Dudden likely used a given folder of materials for.
It was decided that any materials from classes other than the one labeled on an original Course Materials series folder would not be removed from the folder. This was done in part to maintain evidence of the work and thinking that went into creating, updating, or maintaining a given course over multiple years of teaching it. The exception to this was when a folder contained materials that did not correspond to the course labeled on the folder as it was unclear how or why the materials in the folder correlated to one another; in the two instances of this, materials were moved to new folders with materials from the same course. Additionally, to comply with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), documents that contained student grade information, such as grade report sheets, Dudden's handwritten grade charts, and Dudden's comments on student work and their corresponding assignment grade, or information discussing students' academic performance or accommodations were removed from the Course Materials series folder they were originally in and placed in a course-specific restricted folder at the end of the series.
Many of Dudden's files consisted of multiple copies of various course handouts and photocopies of readings and documents; three copies of each type of handout were retained in each folder, and all other copies were discarded in an effort to save space and weed extraneous materials. A minimal number of other materials were weeded from the collection, including a few folders with a single type of course handout that could be found in other course folders, an entire newspaper and printed booklet that were not related to the course labeled on the folder they were in, and the June 13, 1975 Times Literary Supplement and Thomas Cochran's article "The 'Presidential Synthesis' in American History" in the July 1948 American Historical Review, LIII, as Bryn Mawr College Libraries has digital access to them.
- Publisher
- Bryn Mawr College
- Access Restrictions
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This collection is open for research. Access to folders of records containing information related to students' grades, academic performance, or accommodations is restricted under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
- Use Restrictions
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Standard U.S. Copyright Law Applies (U.S. Title 17).