ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the profile of women awarded foreign travel and research fellowships from Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, between 1900 and 1930 and traces the lineage of the idea of cosmopolitanism as an essential characteristic of a well-rounded education. Fellowships to fund travel were viewed as the highest honor the college could bestow on students. They were inaugurated within the first decade of the college's existence, partly due to the insistence of the first dean and, later, first female president, M. Carey Thomas, who had completed her doctoral work in Germany. Thomas was an avid traveler all her life, venturing across Europe and North Africa in sabbaticals and summer sojourns. Having been inspired by her male peers, whom she saw going to Europe as part of their training, she sought out the same path, examining the treasures of European countries through well-worn tourist paths at the same time as she pursued serious scholarship. Under her influence, travel became an important component of higher education for generations of Bryn Mawr women. Examining reports of fellowships in archival material, including student and alumnae pieces in the college newspaper and the Alumnae Bulletin, this chapter seeks to elucidate and analyze personal experiences of foreign travel as part of women's quest to be educated just as gentlemen were.
