Hamilton Gazetteer / Entities / Kirkland Project

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organization

Kirkland Project

Overview

The Kirkland Project is a post-merger institutional program at Hamilton College dedicated to preserving and extending the legacy of Kirkland College, the coordinate women’s college founded in 1968 that merged with Hamilton in 1978. It organizes lecture series, programming, and provides an institutional framework for gender studies alongside the Days-Massolo Center for Women’s and Gender Studies.

Relevance to Research

The Kirkland Project appears in the Spectator corpus in connection with gender studies and feminist organizing at Hamilton. Its lecture series provided programming continuity for the intellectual traditions associated with Kirkland College after the 1978 merger. The W.I.T.C.H. feminist organizing documented in October 1993 — when a campus group distributed flyers signed “W.I.T.C.H.” (Women Irate at Tight-assed Conservatory Hegemony) — is documented in relation to the ongoing feminist organizing context the Kirkland Project helped sustain. The project also sponsored the 2003 ADA accessibility audit conducted by Danny McLain (Resource Center for Independent Living), which found Hamilton’s campus not accessible to people with mobility impairments and identified Root Hall as a high-profile inaccessible building. The Kirkland Project functions alongside the Days-Massolo Center as the primary institutional vehicle for gender and women’s studies programming in the 2000s.

Notes

Type: Academic program / institutional memory project
Active period at Hamilton: Post-merger (1978 onward); documented through at least 2003
Key events: - Established to preserve and extend the legacy of Kirkland College after the 1978 merger - Provides lecture series programming related to gender, women’s studies, and Kirkland’s intellectual traditions - Connected to W.I.T.C.H. feminist organizing documented in October 1993 - Sponsored 2003 ADA accessibility audit (Danny McLain), finding Hamilton not accessible to people with mobility impairments - Functions in parallel with Days-Massolo Center for Women’s and Gender Studies as an organizational framework for gender studies