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Margaret Gillett Fonds
Fonds
1.5 m of textual records.
Margaret Gillett was born in Australia and educated at the University of Sydney, in England and in the United States. She was registrar at Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia for two years before coming to McGill in 1964 as Professor of Education. She is a founding editor of the McGill Journal of Education, and her teaching and publications are oriented towards the history and philosophy of education. She also wrote a novel on the life of the poet Francis Thompson, The Laurel and the Poppy. One of her major interests has been the status of women and women's history. She organized the McGill Committee for Teaching and Research on Women, and has served as a member of the Senate Committee on Women and as coordinator of the Women's Studies Minor. She also represents Canada on UNESCO's subcommission on the status of women. In 1981, Dr. Gillett published We Walked Very Warily: A History of Women at McGill, and in 1986, Dear Grace, a Romance of History.
Gillett donated her records to McGill’s Archives on May 14th, 1971. Other accruals were made on August 8th, 1973 and in February 1989.
Fonds consists of papers pertaining to Gillett’s publications (with the exception of We Walked Very Warily), her addresses, the editing of the McGill Journal of Education and the functions of the Faculty of Education. Materials related to her publications include notes, drafts, galley and page proofs for A History of Education, Foundation Studies in Education, Educational Technology, The Laurel and the Poppy, and A Fair Shake: Autobiographical Essays by McGill Women (edited by Dr. Gillett and Kay Sibbold). There are also some photocopies, correspondence, and copies of photographs collected for We Walked Very Warily. Her editorship of the McGill Journal of Education is documented by copies of minutes of the Editorial Board (1966-1976), correspondence on funding (1970- 1971) and with contributors (1967-1971), and files of correspondence, manuscripts and proofs for issues from 1971, 1973 and 1974. A file of addresses together with some reviews, largely on the women's movement (1975-1976), her convocation address in 1971, and her Report on Women in the Montréal Area delivered at the National Conference on Women in the University, 1973 are also included. Finally, papers relating to her work at the Faculty of Education include correspondence, public relations and summer school materials (1963-1967), agendas, submissions and reports to the Senate of the faculty's Planning Commission (1972-1973) and files of the McGill Committee for Teaching and Research on Women, 1976.