The Life of the Course Catalog: From Symbolic Function to Practical Convention

By
Image taken from scan of 1905-1906 Kenyon Course Catalog (Digital Kenyon)

This week, I looked at a bound volume of the course catalogs of Kenyon College, Bexley Hall Seminary, and the Kenyon Military Academy from 1900-1908. The book was about two inches thick, with yellowed pages upon which rested rows upon rows of neatly typed names and descriptions. This catalog contained a vast amount of information, far beyond the course catalogs we are familiar with, which list the dates, locations, professors, and names of classes offered each semester. For example, each year's catalog contains descriptions of all of the collegiate buildings, the members of the board of trustees, names of all the students and faculty, and requirements for matriculation and examination -- just to name some of the sections! I imagine that these documents were created primarily to keep record of how the college functioned, useful for both current students and the inheritors of the school. While I don't think students read through the entire catalog, I think the sections on what classes to expect, when breaks take place, and what exams are required for graduation would be particularly helpful. Overall, I was struck by how different these course catalogs were from the stark HTML webpage I open to decide what classes to take each semester. I began to wonder what the process of transformation looked like over those 120 years -- how did the catalog change, when, and why?

 Eric Hobsbawm may be able to help us categorize, and thus understand, the course catalog. In "Introduction: Inventing Traditions," Hobsbawm distinguishes between three kinds of repetitive practices: invented traditions, customs, and routines. Briefly, invented traditions are characterized by invariance and an enforced continuity to the past while customs are flexible in content; both have a symbolic function. On the other hand, in Hobsbawm's definition, a "convention or routine" have "technical" justifications and are created to meet a certain practical need efficiently. Because of this, they are "easily modified or abandoned" when needs change (Hobsbawm 271). At the same time, since routines have a tendency to become formalized, whether formally or informally, they can start to be applied automatically, even to situations that don't necessarily make sense for that routine. 

Drawing on this argument, we might understand the course catalog as a routine that has changed in format over time to respond to the changing needs of the college, its administration, and its students. In the early 20th century, the college had about 100 students each year, and it seemed to be a time the organization of the college was often changing (for example, the college's constitution was amended in 1891 and again in 1898). Therefore, it was feasible to list every student and faculty member (there weren't that many) and it was probably more important to record the structure and functioning of the college each year. Also, Kenyon didn't have all the graduation requirements, classes, etc. on a website like they do now, so the catalog would have been the primary source for all that information that can now be more decentralized. Therefore, the catalog is a convention that served a certain purpose but changed over the years. Today, the basic organization of the college stays mostly the same and the Internet means there is no real need to print and bind all the information found in the old catalogs. Another interesting analysis we can draw from Hosbawm's concepts is that the early catalogs seemed to have a more symbolic nature in that they provide a story of becoming. For example, the catalog recounts the history of Kenyon since its incorporation in 1824 and has flowing descriptions of its surrounding environment: "a view of the fertile, smiling valley of the Kokosing, with a gentle, undulating background of cultivated hills." This section especially doesn't seem to have much of a functional purpose, and instead serves as a way for Kenyon to tell a story about itself, its values, and its significance (with grandiose language). Ultimately, we might say that the course catalog was once more of a tradition with symbolic power, but today, it acts as a convention that changes according to practical needs. 

References:

Hobsbawm, Eric. 2012. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” Pp. 271-274 in The Collective Memory Reader, edited by Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Junzo Shono: How We Remember Gambier

By Anonymous
Image
When I entered the Special Collections room, I had no idea where to start or what to do. We were given large files of several notable Kenyon alumni, and it was overwhelming. Without a clear understanding of the responsibilities we were tasked with, we each selected a different file without giving reason or pause as to who we selected. For one reason or another, Junzo Shono’s name caught my eye. I had never heard of the man, but after taking a class on Japanese Literature last fall, I was curious as to who he was and his involvement with the College. Junzo Shono, an acclaimed Japanese writer, first came to Gambier in 1957, where he spent a year in the College capturing and describing the mundane moments of everyday life (Creel, 2022). He would eventually publish these memories in the form of a novel titled “Gambia Taizaiki” (Sojourn in Gambier. He was born in Osaka, Japan on February 9th, 1921, and studied at Osaka University of Foreign Languages for four years, and later studied at Kyu...
Read more

Archival and Canon Memory: Understanding Our Present Through Our Past

By
Image
  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...
Read more

Reflections on "The Struggle for the People's King" and Archive Presentations.

By
The presentations of each group’s project, and the depth of their research were interesting. Glimpsing into their selection process and getting an idea of what informed the final product. For example, the case on student life, allowed us to connect with the Kenyon students who came before us. They presented photos taken by students, as well as posters and objects we see as both recognizable and commonplace at our school today. In the hill case, we tried to collect items less for their individual story or significance but rather chose objects that supported the overall story of growth in the Kenyon community. In the case of other cases, for instance, Kenyon in the world, it was interesting to see the collection of notable figures, objects, and events, creating a full sense of the history.  The reading from this week was concerned with the use of Civil Rights memory toward different ends. The first chapter was concerned with the Islamophobic sentiments rising around America after 200...
Read more