That's TMI: Time, Memory, and Interpretation

     This week in the archives, our group had a lot of discussions about how to approach the topic of "Women and Gender Activism" with an expansive view of gender and avoid reifying gender stereotypes and the gender binary. Many of the folders and boxes we looked at this week focused on the publications and events put on by the Crozier Center at Kenyon, which has historically been a space reserved for women. We talked about how gender activism goes beyond solely women's activism, and could include a variety of genders and transgender causes as well. So far, we have included items that document events like "women's week" and "women's retreats", as well as documents that show Kenyon student's support for procedures like abortion, a reproductive justice issue that affects people of many genders. The question then became how to limit our scope, and how much we want to distinguish between gender and sexuality activism, which have historically...

This week, my group, which is researching global politics at Kenyon, was tasked with beginning to select artifacts from the archive to put into our display. This came with some pressure as we looked through boxes and folders of materials on organizations and documenting events we often hadn’t ever heard about before. Especially when it came time to select boxes we wanted to pull for our appointment in the archive outside of class time, it was at the forefront of our minds how easy it was to miss something by just scrolling past a box name that didn’t make it plainly clear that it was relevant to our topic. Sometimes the names of student organizations were straightforward–“Kenyon Students for a Free Afghanistan” is obviously an organization that deals with international politics–but sometimes organizations aren’t named so clearly. What if we accidentally missed something important or interesting because we simply scrolled past it? And how do we decide which artifacts and memories are ...

This week in the Archives, we were tasked to look through the files in the archived boxes given to each of us. When I opened my box, I was surprised to see there were only two books inside. I decided to grab the purple book that caught my attention first. The purple book turned out to be a shared journal that used to be located in Crozier. The purpose of this journal was for women to share what was on their minds and leave a piece of themselves documented for history. I was fascinated as I was reading and looking through the journal by the things that people wrote down. There was a variety of things included in this journal, such as poetry, sharing opinions, sharing daily activities, and even a "Heterosexual Questionnaire."As I was reading through, I kept making comments to my group about the things I found interesting. I would say one of my favorite things that I read was, "Do you wonder why men only talk to you when you're drunk?" It is clear that throughout t...

This week, my Global Politics group received a folder on The Amnesty International Group Kenyon College Chapter. Among the materials, a letter dated March 2, 1987, stood out to me, prompting deep reflection on this week’s readings about the relationship between past and present events and how history is structured and remembered. In this letter, the group representative calls on faculty and staff to join a letter-writing campaign aimed at advocating for prisoners of conscience, individuals persecuted for their political, religious, or social beliefs. Drawing on the belief that “the pen is mightier than the sword”, the letter urges participants to write to governments that violate human rights, with the goal of promoting justice and safeguarding fundamental freedoms. This letter deeply resonates with Schwartz’s argument about how the past connects to the present to serve as a societal model. According to Schwartz, collective memory functions as a cultural tool for meaning-making, linkin...

       To begin, this last week's readings, we read a mix of Sociologists who came to the general consensus that neither a traditionalist nor presentist approach to memory is effective when answering the questions, "How does this help us as a whole?" or "How can we use the knowledge and experiences of the past to aid us in our current state?" One particular opinion that stood out to me was Barry Schwartz's "mirror-lamp" approach, which details that memory serves as both an illumination and reflection of a society's past. Schwartz's line of thinking states that memory serves as a tool for collective members to gaze upon their community and see what goals, movements, or beliefs they had once taken on. In a sense, this "mirror" serves the same purpose a "looking glass" (as Charles Hooley describes) does, allowing for self-awareness, critique, and analysis. Further, this same lens into the past allows for the "light...

      While looking at materials archived by the Library, I found two photos from environmental organisations on campus in the ‘80s. One depicted about 15 students sitting in a semi-circle in front of a building. My best guess is that those were the members of the Kenyon Environmental Club. The other one depicted three students/members sat on the hood of a car from the 70s. I wanted to keep one of those pictures for our group display, so I was met with a dilemma. Do I keep the picture with the most people in front of a relevant building - a picture that better encapsulates what that organization was about, who belonged there, and what the general vibe was between them; or do I keep the picture that I think looked the coolest?     A. Assmann makes that distinction between intentional and passive forgetting when it comes to cultural objects and symbols, claiming that intentional forgetting involves the active destruction or suppression of memory, whereas...

    On Wednesday, my group-- Identity and Inclusion-- was provided with materials regarding race/ethnicity at Kenyon by means of the student organizations which act on behalf of those identity groups. I sifted through the quite well-documented history of "ADELANTE", an organization dedicated to both "support students of Hispanic ethnic community here at Kenyon" and to "expand other Kenyon students to the cultural differences of Hispanics" according to their founding document (see photo below). The curly blue font upon the peachy-orange page was reminiscent of its time and the language used doesn't quite have the same ring to it as efforts of identity today. Despite this organizations really intent-filled and diligent information keeping, none of us at the table had known of its history at Kenyon before this, even  a member of the organization.       This reminded me of Aleida Assman's concept of "passive remembrance" (p. 355, The Collecti...

I had the opportunity to explore the school archives from an activist organization, the  Womensnet , and came across a tri-fold brochure. The cover of this brochure highlights the event’s name and theme: Women’s Retreat . Upon opening it, you can see that each panel of the tri-fold brochure presents different content in a neat and well-organized manner. What stood out to me the most was the center section—also the most eye-catching part—which was filled with numerous "What if" questions. These questions were clearly designed to prompt reflection on how the campus and our lives could improve if their goals were achieved. I believe these rhetorical questions also set the tone for the discussion planned for the weekend. Also, much like the brochure itself, the retreat seemed designed to feel friendly and even relaxing. According to the brochure, the event was held in Apple Valley and was open to the entire school. Attendees were even encouraged to bring sleeping bags if conven...

Stealing Horses, Stealing History: Kenyon's Political Ghosts, Ghouls, Goblins and such Wednesday was a dainty dip into the archives—definitely less of a deep dive and more a polite toe-touch into the murky depths of Kenyon's political past. My group—Liv, Emily, Elliot, and I—sorted through folders encasing the righteous fury of student political organizations. It was fascinating and, frankly, freaky to see how the Cold War/Red Scare paranoia bled into campus life, with letters and Collegian op-eds filled with wildly opposing takes on communism, conservatism, and the role of academia in national politics. By Friday, we had our hands on our first archival box: the Civil War collection. And like a well-oiled machine, we quickly landed on our project's core idea—curating a display centered around Kenyon's involvement in major wars and how the institution has remembered, celebrated, or conveniently forgotten them. The folder I picked focused on Edwin Stanton, Class of 1834, ...

     In the archives this week, one of my groupmates pulled out a confessional journal from the Crozier Center box. I didn't get to inspect the book so closely, but just the glimpses I got provided delightful insights into the thoughts of women from decades before. The book had an older look to it - a beautifully ornate binding not many personal journals have anymore. It was full of entries written in beautiful cursive (another aspect that dated the book in my eyes) of women reflecting on womanhood and women's issues/interests. I did not get a full inspection of this book, I was privy to the sections that seemed relevant or worthwhile enough to read aloud to the group. In a lot of ways, the fact that this was how I experienced the entries provided a very telling experience of what from the past gets read aloud today - which things are relevant to this modern group of women. From just hearing the end of an entry "God I love being a woman" I could only imagine the other...

This past week in the archives, we were able to hone in our group's topic: Identity and inclusion. Progressing from files to boxes of materials from different organizations, we leafed through posters, documents, photos, etc. from groups like Adelante, AAPI, Hilel, BSU, and more. On Monday we found paperwork from 1989 recording the officiation of Adelante. The group thought it important to save this orange piece of paper and they were right. The document had signatures of potential members of the group as well as context to what the group would be. The document had ot yet been signed by the dean of students, but we know now that this would become the case. On wednesday we graduated to archival boxes where Andreas and I looked through the Black Student Union box. Upon flipping over 3 or 4 papers we found a document that chronologically listed important dates regarding kenyon history in relation to black history and students of color on campus. It became apparent that these groups are...

  Commemorating the Lives of our Village This past week, my group and I looked through various subject files about American Politics from Kenyon's archives. We found ourselves particularly interested in Kenyon's box on the Civil War. We looked at images from the Civil War, letters from Kenyon alumni during the time, and Kenyon's efforts to remember those who served in the Civil War. I was drawn to the files on how Kenyon attempted to remember those we lost from the Kenyon Community in the Civil War. In that file there was a proposed archway plan that would memorialize Kenyon’s contributions to the war. The idea of this came to be during the commencement week of 1908 when alumni expressed their concerns about the “Gates of Hell” not being suitable for our campus anymore. The archway, formally known as The Memorial of Kenyon’s Sons, would stand where the Gates of Hell are. On either side of the interior of the arch, there would be a bronze tablet, one reading the names of K...

     This week, navigating through the archives involved sifting through folders and boxes that offered specialized insights into Kenyon’s history. Kenyon’s old age and consequent long history is no secret, so materials – including folders stuffed inside a box detailing information about the Civil War period – provided a fascinating window into the world of Kenyon from centuries past. The contents of these boxes illustrating Kenyon’s youthful years certainly painted a different picture from the senior and aged Kenyon we find today. While Kenyon today is recognized for its inclusive and diverse campus life, certain artifacts my group uncovered suggested a very different atmosphere in its earlier days. Among the particularly confounding and striking discoveries were a preserved Confederate flag and records showing students and faculty taking leave from Kenyon to join the Confederate army. We also found an article written in the 1960s by Kenyon students containing overtly ra...

     Before the archival work on Wednesday, I picked up my copy of the Collegian from Pierce to do my routine quarter of the crossword and then recycle, but as I flipped through it an article in the opinion section caught my attention. “Kenyon community should honor legacy of civil discourse” is an opinion that’s immediately agreeable, especially considering the history Kenyon has of spirited political activism—upon further reading, though, the message is contradictory to the actions and motivations of Kenyon students.        “I want to encourage our community to make sure we are practicing our activism in the right way,” Lifson, Collegian staff writer, says, referring to our tendency to sit around talking politics at one another. It’s by no means a bad sentiment, but it conflates Kenyon with a right and wrong way to engage in political dialogue—in keeping with Schwartz (2000), it identifies a societal model, templating “civil discourse” as the Ke...

     A lot of exciting developments this week as our ideas for this project have begun to really take shape. During our time working with the archive materials this week, we all began to realize that we are incredibly drawn to materials relating to Kenyon and its handling of national crises. We specifically became incredibly interested in what was going on at Kenyon during times of war, and how such times, and the losses associated with them, were commemorated.       One such example of Kenyon’s commemoration of a member of the community lost during wartime was Lorin Andrews. He was the President of Kenyon from 1853 until he resigned to enlist in the Union Army in 1861. He was widely recognized as the first Ohioan to volunteer to fight for the Union. While in service, he caught typhus and died in Gambier less than a year later. The College went into deep mourning, and he was buried here on campus, with his funeral procession held on Middle Path.  ...

  This week, one of the many artifacts my group examined, was an old issue of The Collegian. The main story of this issue was the reconstruction of the Brown Family Environmental Center. This edition of the Collegian was significant because it detailed certain transformations being made to the center that would give it more focus on academics and incorporating student education as a part of the BFEC. For example, the article focuses on the construction of a new building that will operate as a hub for both student labs, as well as environmental education programs for the public, which the BFEC is now well known for. This article is also historically significant as it was written right after the BFEC was renamed to the Brown Family Environmental Center. It is important to examine sources like these, as they offer what the earliest perspectives and actions of what the BFEC were, which is interesting to compare to modern activities of the environmental center. This week we also read an...

The archival work this Friday consisted of learning the protocols for retrieval of materials from boxes, as well as how to navigate the library's organization system to schedule and appointment in the archives, and to this end select some boxes of materials we wished to see removed. Sometimes it turns out memory lane already bears a lot of traffic, and in this process we took a few speculative detours. In a short session going through the catalogue of ar we discovered a great number of student organizations we'd never even imagined existed. Even within the limited section we were assigned to look through, namely Series IV, Sub-series 2, the one covering student organizations there was a staggering number of different organizations and documents attached to them. Everything from the self-evidently named Banjo and Aerobics Clubs, to organizations of vague purpose like "Birkenstocks" and the "Newman Club," to regrettable or repugnant parts of Kenyon's Histo...

  This week, my group and I worked on collecting materials that align with our theme of Global Politics. In a manner true to the nature of archives, some folders and topics had more content than others because the entire process is dependent on others' donations. When examining the folder about  The Gambier/Knox County El Salvador Solidarity Committee, I only had one element to review: the founding document of the organization. Compared to folders for organizations such as Kenyon Students for Justice in Palestine (KSJP), which was full of several items since it is such a recent organization, my folder was sparse. One of my peers asked the Archives Specialists if it was because the folder was new, but it was actually a few decades old, but the content within it was limited to what had been donated to the archives. This reminds me of Michael Schudson's "The Past in the Present versus the Present in the Past," specifically the idea that the ability to reconstruct the pas...

       As we shuffled into the archives classroom in lower chalmers, it immediately felt like a room of preservation: white walls, little clutter, and archival material placed at each desk. I joined my group at a table on the far end, only later realizing each table was grouped chronologically, and the materials we were faced with marked the beginning. I picked up a dark green/black dusty catalogue from 1849 with a broken spine. When I opened the book on the first page, there was a sketch drawing of “Rosse Chapel,” holding a similar facade as Rosse Hall today. The next page specified “Catalogue of The Theological Seminary of the Diocese of Ohio, Kenyon College, and Kenyon Grammar Schools.” During our time in the archive classroom, I was initially drawn to the depictions of the old buildings, but outside of class, I was able to read more in depth in the online archives consort. The catalogue introduces the college's beginnings in academia to “show the rise and progres...