Two Jobs of Work

You have two jobs of work to complete before spring break: curating your blog and working on the Aspect Magazine project.

Curating Your Blog It is imperative that you are working on your writing. The schedule for this work is up to you. But you need to keep in mind that between class on Thursday March 2 and class on Tuesday March 7 we will all be annotating your blog with our thoughts and suggestions.

We have had a late February thaw, and the rivers in New England are at flood stage. Yet a few of you appear to be caught in an eddy. You need to get back out into the flow. Please read the most recent posts, “Linguists and Contenders” and “Feeling Thinking Doing.” These posts are offering some organizing commentary and metacommentary on our intellectual work. We have read a lot of material, and there are stories to tell about those materials. As you go back over your writing, makes notes on what you wrote and how you can now see what you have written differently. You have read a lot. You have been thinking. And we have talked about your writing–in class and in our conferences.

To borrow a formulation from the poet Ezra Pound: You have broken wood. Now it is time for carving.

Your reflection (reading over what you have completed) and shaping, or curating, the writing on your blog will prepare us for 1) reading all the course blogs and annotating them using “Open Space of Democracy” group on Hypothes.is and then 2) participating in a “Blog Charrette” where we will exchange ideas, play with options, and further refine your writing.

Working on Aspect Magazine On Friday I met with the College Archivist, Rodney Obien, who is looking forward to welcoming you to the Keene State College Archives. On Tuesday Rodney is going to talk about his work as an archivist and talk about cultural work of archives. And he will introduce you to some of the materials in the Social Justice collection. (Remember, class will meet in the Mason Library Archive.)

We will also turn our attention to Aspect Magazine. We will make the paper copies of the journal available for browsing on Tuesday and Thursday. You will also receive a digital copy of two issues of the journal. We will then introduce you to a method of abstracting information from a document in an archive.Using a template I will provide, you will be responsible for creating “metadata” for two issues of the journal. The document you produce for each journal will be published with the digital copy of the journal. Your work will be available for anyone, including graduate students, professors, and independent scholars, doing research in the archive. And you will receive credit as a Contributing Editor on the web site.

Before Tuesday have a look at the Description of the Aspect Magazine project on the Projects Page. Reading the materials on the Aspect Magazine Project site before we meet will give you additional context for your work. In brief, Aspect magazine (1969-1980) was the creation of Edward J. Hogan, of Somerville, Massachusetts. Hogan was a history major at Northeastern University in March of 1969 when he launched a magazine featuring social and political commentary by a small group of university students. Hogan subsequently expanded that magazine to include poetry, fiction, graphic design, and literary news and reviews. Aspect published many writers, poets, and artists that represented the “Boston Scene” of the late 1960s and 1970s.

For Thursday I have assigned some reading that will further your understanding of the intellectual and creative collective of people involved in Aspect, Leora Zeitlin’s compilation of materials in “Remembering Ed Hogan” (1998)