Imagination & Time
![The Owl [January 1935]](https://wayback.archive-it.org/1914/20191226103403im_/https://harlemeducationhistory.library.columbia.edu/collection/files/fullsize/e21b293b4709acd68e64e4fe9edbfe49.jpg "The Owl [January 1935]")
“Alice in Wadleighland”, The Owl January 1935. The fictional character Alice wonders around Wadleigh and meets some of its seniors. One of them, of Austrian ancestry, is called 'Nazi'. The use of the nickname is the first mention of the regime in Germany in The Owl, and its casualness hints at what American discourse did or did not emphasize at the time.
World War II started on June 1st, 1939, after Germany invaded Poland. The United States did not enter the war until December 8th, 1941, one day after its naval base in Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese air force. But Wadleigh students were imagining what was happening with these global conflicts even before U.S. involvement in the war.
In this section we want to invite you to explore how time impacted the way Wadleigh students imagined the history they were being part of. They learned from their past and that of their parents, which informed how they imagined a war that was being fought in the present, thousands of miles away. In this context of war, they also imagined new futures for the world they wanted to live in.