The First Female Senior Fellow
“If you say no women, I'm going to be the [first].” -Landsmark
Ife Landsmark was the first female to participate in the Dartmouth Senior Fellowship Program, an alternative major that promotes academic flexibility, self-education, and independent research. The Senior Fellowship Program, established in 1929 by Ernest Hopkins, allows students to complete projects “in which the intellectual scope and breadth of imagination goes beyond that which can be accomplished by taking courses offered in the existing curriculum” (Dartmouth Office of the Registrar).
According to the Registrar, “The Senior Fellows are chosen from among students of such intellectual caliber, independence of character, and imaginative curiosity that they have become interested in some personal project of study that will contribute to their own intellectual growth.” As the first female Senior Fellow, Ife Landsmark not only displayed intellectual caliber, independence, and curiosity, but also courage, ambition, and tenacity.
“I applied for the senior fellowship the first semester I was [at Dartmouth] because I learned that there had never been a female… They had never had a female senior fellow.” -Landsmark
As a Senior Fellow, Landsmark studied the separation of people by race and gender. Landsmark was inspired by the cafeteria at Dartmouth, where groups like the football team were “self-segregated… by race.” Landsmark was “interested in that behavior.” She wondered: “How far did it go? Did it go south? Did it go to Europe? Did it go [to] Africa?”
To answer these questions, Landsmark traveled to Africa and Europe, where she “learned more about disparities and harshness” and “was struck by…the isolation of people into groups.” Upon returning to Hanover, Landsmark wrote her thesis from Dick’s House, where she was receiving treatment for a skin infection.
According to Landsmark, “one of the things that came out of [her senior fellowship] was the Black Praxis. Landsmark "created the newspaper called the Black Praxis and then jerry-rigged a team" (Landsmark 2022). Three of the articles that Landsmark wrote for the Black Praxis are attached below.
