Virginia Gildersleeve - Women Collaborating -IFUW

Women Collaborating -IFUW

Gildersleeve and Spurgeon met just after the First World War ended when a delegation of British educators came to the United States. Caroline Spurgeon, a highly respected Shakespeare scholar who published many books and papers about both Chaucer and Shakespeare, taught at Bedford College for Women, part of the University of London. Meeting Spurgeon allowed Together they worked establish an organization that would foster international cooperation among like-minded academic women. Gildersleeve imagined an organization built on the model of the American Association of Collegiate Alumnae and the British Federation of University Women. In 1919 they created the International Federation of University Women (IFUW), housing it in London with a second home in Paris at Reid Hall. For two decades, between World War I and World War II, Gildersleeve worked through the IFUW (www.ifuw.org) to keep alive the spirit of international understanding, even as isolationism gripped her country. They believed that the women of the world could make change by talking to and learning from each other.