That's TMI: Time, Memory, and Interpretation

Reflecting on the small exhibition on the topic of Environmentalism at Kenyon with Abby and Lily, I could not help but reflect on the process of undertaking this task. Through many meetings in which we looked again and again at different folders and boxes, parsing through an endless stream of information which we had to analyze and fit into a coherent, visually and mentally intriguing narrative, we picked a good variety of materials to construct the narrative that environmentalism has taken many forms in Kenyon’s history. From collections of pressed flowers to recycling groups and then later recycling facilities and the makings of the BFEC, it is safe to say for as long as Kenyon has existed, an interest in the environment has been present on this campus.   Yazdiha, in chapter 6 of her book “The Struggle for the People’s King, presents the notion that  collective memory is something that is subject to the whims of those who invoke it. She specifically references the femin...

With the work of remembered now performed on Kenyon's archives, I feel like our group had done a good job in creating a kind of montage of the major turning points and ongoing process of opening Kenyon up to those previously excluded from higher education. With the photos of Ballard and Jackson, Kenyon's first two Black students, it felt like we found a decent start to Kenyon's road to opening its doors to those qualified by previously excluded due to their race or sex. The later photographs of the art exhibit commemorating Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, as well as the founding documents of Adelante and photos of Lusanne Segre, the manager of Snowden house, were a great way of showing not just the firsts of the college, but ongoing effort to recognize more groups as worthy of education. I feel it created a decent narrative of how not only there were successes of inclusion, but also the specific role that students and faculty alike played in making it happen. What I feel...

  This week, our group finalized our item selection. Compared to previous weeks, we focused on constructing the meaning behind the chronological presentation of our objects. After viewing the class exhibition, I noticed some key differences between our approach and that of other groups. When other groups were presenting, most of them mentioned that they were trying to focus on capturing the key moments in the Kenyon history of their theme when selecting items. Therefore, in my opinion, their presentations have a degree of historical and factual foundation based on the assumption that the theme has made historical progress at Kenyon. This can be seen through the presentation of specific figures and specific events related to those figures. Looking back, I realize that our selection process involved a conscious attempt to highlight student responses that best represent Kenyon’s engagement with global politics from the past century to the present. After all, the approaches that differ...

If you'd told me at the start of this project that I'd walk away from it with something close to a fondness for a group project—a group project—I would've stared at you like you just suggested I major in Econ for fun. I would've collected a hefty pocketful of Middle Path pebbles and prepared to launch dramatically into the Kokosing. And yet, here I am. Admitting, in plain text, that working with Emily, Elliot, and Liv was not only functional, but—unsettlingly—fun. We were randomly assigned, and somehow, what could've easily been four people orbiting their own stress cycles turned into a well-balanced machine powered by caffeine, shared Google Docs, and the quiet, unspoken fear of being the one who forgot the meeting.  By the end of the first week, our Monday 1 p.m. meetings were locked into the schedule like we were a tiny cult of punctual archivists. We added a Wednesday or two when needed, and even threw ourselves into a pre-presentation Friday—an act of academic...

 This week, our group completed the final presentation on women's activism at Kenyon. Our group's timeline spans from 1969, when Kenyon welcomed its first female students and its first tenured female professor, to around 2000. During this period, we continuously observed female students and organizations, and, later, non-gender-specific people promoting a female-friendly environment at the school through club activities, posters, and other forms of expression. Even though we did not selectively fabricate any materials to create the illusion of continuous and active feminist activism at Kenyon, we did discover another issue: while the history of women at Kenyon is something we can be proud of, it seems to only include white women. We did not find records of activism by women of color, which is especially obvious from looking at the visual materials, it was only white women who were represented. This week, we learned three concepts of reckoning , restoration , and reconciliatio...

This week we finalized our displays in preparation for our presentation. Looking around all of the other groups’ displays and hearing them present their materials and the experiences they had working in the archive, I was struck by a couple of things. One was that I had never heard of many of the organizations whose materials my group had been looking at, whereas other groups had pulled materials and history from ones that I had heard of. Another was that other groups said that one of the hardest things about this project was the sheer amount of materials they had to look through and choose between, whereas my group kept coming up slightly empty when searching for materials that fit our theme–Kenyon student’s reactions to global politics. In chapter 6 of The Struggle for the People’s King, Hajar Yazdiha discusses restoration, reconciliation, and reckoning in the context of conflict along racial lines within the feminist movement and feminist activism. Yazdiha outlines that in order fo...