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Teaches undergraduates and graduate students in the History of American Women and United States History with a focus on the twentieth century. She also teaches a graduate course on Historic Site Interpretation.
Professor Synnott's research focuses
on two main areas: higher education and American women’s history.
Her first book dealt with access to and discrimination in higher education:
(1) The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 (Westport,
CT.: Greenwood Press, Inc., 1979). Dr. Synnott updated her research on
this topic with three recent publications: (2) “The Evolving `Diversity Rationale’in
University Admissions: From Regents v. Bakke to the University
of Michigan Cases,” presented at the February 28, 2004 “Symposium “Revisiting Brown v. Board of Education”and
published in Cornell Law Review 90:2 (January 2005); (3) "A Friendly Rivalry: Yale and Princeton Universities Pursue Parallel Paths to Coeducation," in Going Coed: Women's Experiences in Formerly Men's Colleges and Universities, 1950-2000, ed.
Leslie Miller-Bernal and Susan L. Poulson (Nashville: Vanderbilt University
Press, 2004); (4)"The Changing `Harvard Student': Ethnicity, Race, and Gender," in Yards and Gates: Gender in Harvard and Radcliffe History, ed.
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Since living
in South Carolina Dr Synnott has researched and published on desegregation
in higher education, for example, (5) "Federalism Vindicated: University
Desegregation in South Carolina and Alabama, 1962-1963," Journal of Policy History I:3
(July 1989). This research led her to examine the role of a white woman
civil rights activist in South Carolina, Alice Norwood Spearman Wright,
who served as executive director of the South Carolina Council on Human
Relations, a biracial, middle-class organization, from 1954 to 1967.
The most recent of Dr. Synnott’s two book chapters on Wright is (6) "Crusaders and Clubwomen: Alice Norwood Spearman Wright and Her Women's Network," in Throwing Off the Cloak of Privilege: White Southern Women Activists in the Civil Rights Era, ed. Gail S. Murray (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004). Contributing to my goal of finishing a political-social biography of Alice Spearman Wright that focuses on her biracial activities will be a chapter (7) “Alice Buck Norwood Spearman Wright: Civil Rights Activist,” for a forthcoming anthology, South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, edited by Marjorie J. Spruill, Valinda Littlefield, Joan Marie Johnson (University of Georgia Press, 2009). In addition, my chapter on (8) “African American Women Pioneers in Desegregating Higher Education,” has been published in Higher Education and the Civil Rights Movement: White Supremacy, Black Southerners, and College Campuses, ed. Peter Wallenstein (University Press of Florida, 2008).
To see Professor Synnott CV, click here.
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