by Daniel Collins

In January 1935, a new “bird’s-eye view” of the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina (WCUNC) went on sale for fifty cents. For the students of the era, the map was more than a navigational aid; it was a vibrant, colored illustration of their world, featuring everything from the “odor of sugar and spice” in the Home Economics building to the “sighs of delight” at the sight of visiting uniforms from Oak Ridge Military Academy.¹ While the map served the practical purpose of updating a campus layout that had not been formally mapped since 1906, its creation by Emma Lee Aderholt and the Home Economics Club reveals a deeper institutional narrative. The Aderholt map serves as a primary artifact documenting the transition of the Woman’s College into a modern, professionalized institution. By examining the map’s focus on “social contacts” and its funding of scholarships, it becomes clear that the Home Economics Department used this project to assert its role as the cultural and economic heart of the campus during the 1930s.

The necessity for a new map was born out of nearly three decades of unprecedented physical and numerical growth. By July 1934, the Alumnae News reported that the previous 1906 map was hopelessly obsolete, noting that there had been “a total of 40 changes to the campus” including new buildings, additions, and extensive remodeling.² This physical expansion mirrored a surge in the student body. The college catalogue for the 1934-1935 session recorded that while the school opened in 1892 with only 223 students, it had grown to an enrollment of 1,327.³ This growth created a “nagging cry” for a visual representation that could reconcile the institution’s humble beginnings with its new status as a major component of the University of North Carolina system. The Aderholt map provided this reconciliation by juxtaposing the “girl on muleback” from the college’s founding with the “modern girl” who “drops down from the skies” to attend the Woman’s College.⁴ This visual metaphor directly reflects the broader institutional mission described by scholar Pamela Dean: the fashioning of a “New Woman” for the “New South,” designed to move southerners from a “rural, agricultural world” to an “urban, entrepreneurial, and industrial” one.⁵ This transition was supported by rigorous academic inquiry within the department; as Mary Davis Faison noted in her 1933 investigation into North Carolina homes, the Home Economics Department was actively analyzing the varying socioeconomic backgrounds of its students to better prepare them for these new roles in a changing state.⁶

The choice of the Home Economics Club to lead this initiative was not accidental, but rather a reflection of the department’s specific mission and its high status on campus. While modern observers might view Home Economics through a narrow domestic lens, the 1932 Pine Needles yearbook clarifies that the club’s objectives were “to arouse interest in the field of Home Economics, to develop an appreciation of home making, and to cultivate the enjoyment of social contacts.”⁶ This final goal—the cultivation of social contacts—is the “why” behind the map’s success in capturing campus culture. The Home Economics Department was uniquely positioned to create a map because their curriculum integrated “Applied Art” with “Social Science.”⁷ In fact, the institutional history of the Art Department explains why Emma Lee Aderholt, an art student, produced the map under the Home Economics umbrella. As Virginia Terrell Lathrop notes in Educate a Woman, the early Art Department “waned and its activities were combined with the Home Economics Department for many years.”⁸ Because the independent art department had essentially “flopped” in its early stages, it merged with Home Economics, making the club the primary home for campus creative projects and the logical producer of a bird’s-eye view map.

Furthermore, the Home Economics Department enjoyed a protected status during the “allocation of functions” that occurred during the 1932 consolidation of the North Carolina university system. As historian Elisabeth Ann Bowles notes, while the Woman’s College was forced to give up its library science program to Chapel Hill, it “theoretically retained graduate work in home economics.”⁹ This academic seniority gave the department the institutional leverage to spearhead major campus-wide cultural artifacts like the Aderholt map.

The map itself, drawn by 1934 graduate Emma Lee Aderholt with the assistance of Home Economics art classes, is a masterpiece of “close reading” for the historian. One should immediately notice that the map prioritizes the lived experience over technical accuracy. For example, the Carolinian describes how a “girl’s head strains from a Hinshaw window to inform her friends that Mrs. Boyd is checking,” and musical notes flow from the Gray dormitory to represent the WBIG radio station.⁹ These details problematize the idea of a map as a cold, objective document. Instead, Aderholt presents the campus as a gendered space of both surveillance (Mrs. Boyd) and social longing (the “letter from mamma”). As Pamela Dean observes, the college culture was a “hotbed of pedagogical experimentation” where students turned to faculty for inspiration in creating a “new image of womanhood” that was nurtured through “close student-faculty relations and the extracurricular and social activities they shared.”¹⁰ The map documents this social intimacy, showing the dining halls and dormitories where students and faculty “intertwined” their daily lives.¹¹

Furthermore, the Home Economics Department used the map as a tool for economic self-sufficiency, a core tenet of their discipline. The proceeds from the fifty-cent maps were used to “establish a home economics scholarship or a loan fund.”¹² This is a critical historical detail: during the height of the Great Depression in the mid-1930s, students were taking the initiative to fund their own education through “Applied Art.” This action aligned perfectly with President Charles McIver’s founding philosophy that women had the right to be “independent and self-supporting.”¹³ The Catalogue for 1934-1935 emphasizes that the college sought to provide “instruction in… home economics, and in other subjects the mastery of which will enable women to become self-supporting.”¹⁴ By creating, marketing, and selling the Aderholt map, the Home Economics Club was practicing the very professional self-sufficiency they were being taught in their “state-of-the-art” laboratories.¹⁵ This was a direct challenge to the “antebellum female ideal” of being “domestic and dependent,” replacing it with a professionalized image of women as participants in public affairs.¹⁶

In conclusion, the Emma Lee Aderholt map of 1935 is much more than a vintage illustration. It is a record of a department Home Economics that saw itself as the bridge between the domestic and the professional, and between the campus’s 19th century roots and its 20th century future. By focusing on “social contacts” and the “modern girl,” the Home Economics Club created a document that captured the vibrant, rhythmic life of the Woman’s College during a period of intense growth. The map remains a testament to a generation of women who were taught to be “self-supporting,” and who used their artistic and organizational skills to map not only their campus but their place in a changing world.

Footnotes

¹ “Home Economics Art Class Prepares Map of College Campus to Be Placed on Display Soon,” The Carolinian, January 11, 1935.

² “By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them,” Alumnae News, July 1934, 4.

³ The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina: The forty-third session [The catalogue 1934-1935], 12.

⁴ The Carolinian, January 11, 1935.

⁵ Pamela Dean, “Learning to Be New Women: Campus Culture at the North Carolina Normal and Industrial College,” The North Carolina Historical Review 68, no. 3 (1991): 286.

⁶ Pine Needles [Yearbook], 1932, 186.

⁷ Historiographically, the Home Economics movement of the 1930s is often misunderstood as a regressive return to the “cult of domesticity.” However, as evidenced by the WCUNC Catalogue, the department was actually a leader in “Applied Art” and “Institutional Management,” representing a professionalization of women’s work.

⁸ Virginia Terrell Lathrop, Educate a woman: fifty years of life at the Woman’s college of the University of North Carolina (Greensboro: Woman’s College, 1942), [Page Number].

⁹ The Carolinian, January 11, 1935.

¹⁰ Dean, “Learning to Be New Women,” 289.

¹¹ Dean, “Learning to Be New Women,” 290.

¹² The Carolinian, January 11, 1935. This loan fund was particularly significant given the economic climate of 1935. Many students at the Woman’s College struggled with tuition during the Depression, and “Ways and Means” committees often became the primary source of student aid.

¹³ Dean, “Learning to Be New Women,” 289.

¹⁴ The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina: The forty-third session [The catalogue 1934-1935], 15.

¹⁵ The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina: The forty-third session [The catalogue 1934-1935], 22.

¹⁶ Dean, “Learning to Be New Women,” 288.

Annotated Bibliography

Primary Sources

Alumnae News (July 1934). “By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them.” Page 4.
This source provides the institutional justification for the creation of the map. It establishes that the 1906 map was out of date due to “40 changes” on campus. I used this to establish the historical context of physical growth at WCUNC.

The Carolinian (January 11, 1935). “Home Economics Art Class Prepares Map of College Campus.”
This is the most descriptive source for the map itself. It identifies Emma Lee Aderholt as the artist and explains the social scenes depicted (Hinshaw window, Oak Ridge uniforms). It also confirms the map’s price and its purpose as a fundraiser for a scholarship fund.

Lathrop, Virginia Terrell. Educate a woman: fifty years of life at the Woman’s college of the University of North Carolina. Greensboro: Woman’s College, 1942.
Lathrop’s book provides essential institutional context regarding the Art Department’s history. It explains that the manual arts were a significant part of the early curriculum but that the department eventually merged into Home Economics, which clarifies why Aderholt’s map was a Home Economics project.

Pine Needles [Yearbook] (1932). “Home Economics Club.” Page 186.
This source outlines the mission statement of the Home Economics Club. Specifically, the goal to “cultivate the enjoyment of social contacts” provided the key link for my argument as to why the map focuses so heavily on the social life of students rather than just geography.

The Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina: The forty-third session [The catalogue 1934-1935].
This catalogue provides data on the “numerical factor of growth” at the college. It also describes the “Home Economics Laboratories” as being equipped with the “latest developments,” which supports the idea that the department was a modern, high-status part of the college.

Scholarship (Secondary Sources)

Dean, Pamela. “Learning to Be New Women: Campus Culture at the North Carolina Normal and Industrial College.” The North Carolina Historical Review 68, no. 3 (1991): 286–306.
Dean’s article provides the historiographical framework for the essay. She argues that the college was “fashioning a New Woman” for the New South who was independent and self-supporting. Her analysis of the shift from rural to urban life and the importance of student-faculty social bonds provides the perfect scholarly backing for interpreting the Aderholt map’s content and border illustrations.

Allen W. Trelease, Making North Carolina Literate: The University of North Carolina at Greensboro from Normal School to Metropolitan University (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2004) Chapter 9. history provides vital context for the economic and political environment of the 1930s.  65% budget cut to emphasize the importance of the Aderholt map scholarship fund. His explanation of the “allocation of functions” during consolidation also explains why the Home Economics department retained so much power and why WC students were cheering on a short-lived group of male “coeds” known as the Tom Cats.

Faison, Mary Davis. “An Investigation into the Types of Homes Represented in the Home Economics Department of the High Schools of North Carolina,” 1933.

This study provides contemporary sociological evidence of the diverse backgrounds of Home Economics students. I used it to show that the department was engaging in academic research into the lives and homes of its constituents during the same period the map was created.