UNH Trip (Engl Department--6/1)

Murray Contemporaries (1974)

Hapgood, Williams, Carnicelli, Weesner, Smith, Miller, Logan, Goffe, Richardson, Yount, Nicoloff, Dawson, Crow, Karl Diller,

Cindy Gannett diss committee: Don, Don, Tom, Karl Diller, Grant Cioffe

Other people to talk to: Alice Fogel, Dan Reagan, Donna Qualley, Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater

Publications:

Broadside—appears to be a publication of the English Department written by majors or students. Gives an interesting glimpse into the goings-on of the English Department 1972/73.

Between Us—same period, but aimed at English faculty

Boxes Done:

English Department

General File Departmental Archives

A-G

Applicants-Grants

(completed 7/1)

English Department

General File Departmental Archives

H-Pol

Hall Directors-Policy Research

English Department

General File Departmental Archives

Pos-W

Postcard Memo-WSBE

Syllabi

Summer 94 and earlier

Final Grade Rosters

Fall 03-Spring 2000

Confidential

Green Note on top: 1/2006 Items from “Archives” drawer

(did not start)

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Notes from a day at the UNH archive…what do I have to say?

It was a strange day to wade through these five or so boxes, most of which were totally unorganized, unarchived, uncatalogued. It felt very raw…like you never knew what was going to be in the next folder. Someone had apparently attempted to organize the folders by alphabetical letter, but this didn’t work, really. My sense, now as I look back, is that whoever was archiving the stuff was a clerical person who could not really understand what was in the boxes. At one point I found a folder of tenure-review materials, very confidential stuff about who should be promoted to what on what grounds. Later I found annual reviews. And sprinkled throughout the boxes was Murray, like little shards of data or splinters in a body of some sort. I kept trying to explain to the women there that I really did need to just sit and go through the boxes, that only someone who was and is engaged in telling the story could know what might be useful or meaningful.

So what was useful or meaningful? Two very interesting items:

1.     Two Murray syllabi.

2.     Murray’s annual evaluation from, I think, his final year at UNH.

What else? I’d have to and will have to go back over everything I collected. One thing that was interesting was two newsletters from roughly the period 1972-1975 or so—one aimed at a faculty audience, from what I could gather, and one aimed at a student/faculty audience. During this time, their editors/writers put a good deal of time and energy into these newsletters—one of them even came out weekly. I got a sense, while reading them or skimming of them, of a vibrant place—writers visiting, discussions, lectures, etc. There was also a sense of a common project/purpose and what seemed like a surprising level of sophistification on the part of the students, who seemed to be aware of faculty issues and topics of discussion (i.e. promotion—which is something we pretty much never discuss with our students).

There was an attempt, near the end of Murray’s career, to get some kind of summer MA or graduate certificate in writing or teaching writing off the ground. I grabbed some correspondence of Murray talking about this with a dean. There is clear engagement on his part with scholars in the field.

There is an interesting series of documents from the early 1970s where it seems that UNH and Plymouth may have been collaborating on publishing something around the teaching of English. One thought I had about these materials is the feeling that Murray was, perhaps, a member of a department, at that time, that was really innovative and creative in thinking about the teaching of English to undergraduates. I don’t know whether this reflects a trend of that historical moment or is a reflection of the creativity and innovation of the department at UNH itself. It struck me as interesting.

I photocopied a series of syllabi from the mid to late-1980s. I have this quote from Gary Lindberg in my head about the UNH writing program reflecting Don’s work and it’s a nice set up quote. I wanted to see, for one thing, how his work figured into their teaching and I was surprised to see that many 401 faculty were using Don’s textbook or books to teach writing—two in particular, I think Writing to Learn and maybe Reading to Write. It surprised me how often Don’s textbook was on syllabi. I was also and am also interested in thinking of those syllabi as a form of evidence for the extent to which Don helped shape the culture of writing at UNH…This is something I’ll have to look at more carefully. There are moments when instructors are quoting him on their syllabi. Clearly, his shadow was long, even or perhaps especially at the end.

I got interested in this idea of a culture of writing at UNH and thought a good deal about the people who were involved in creating the culture besides Don (Les, Gary Lindberg, Tom N, Tom C. and others more obscure) and also in Don’s role in creating this culture. One of the stories that I would like to try to tell or understand better is the process by which Don went from hired-journalism instructor to guru. I look for instances where Don reached out to his colleagues or gave workshops/talks within English on teaching. I feel myself wanting to map that evolution from WRITER to WRITING TEACHER/GURU and to understand how, exactly, it happened. And also, to think about it through the lens of the institution—how the department welcomed and made a place for the kind of innovative, student-centered thinking that Don was advocating for.

It was also interesting to see the mundane details of memos that discussed, for example, how Becky Rule had been overlooked for an instructorship or other promotional materials when Don was giving his input on a faculty member’s progress towards tenure. I saw him, in these files, perhaps for the first time, as a member of a particular department and well-established by the early 1970s as a “senior” person who was involved in important departmental business.

It was a good day. I made MANY photocopies of documents that I think will be useful in some way or other. I am beginning to think of widening my list of interviewees or people I can or should talk to—other English faculty at the time, perhaps grad students or instructors from the early 1970s. Dan Reagan is one person I might speak to.

There is also this feeling of the value of writing at UNH—of it being a culture that is amenable to discussions of the teaching of the craft of writing. You have these novelists and these poets there doing their work. You have this feeling that this was a community or a culture of folks who were not ONLY engaged in the study of literature, although that obviously was a big part of what they did. I think that trying to articulate the culture of writing that existing during these early years and the role that creative writers, perhaps, played in it, would be important for providing context. I noted that Russell Banks taught ENGL 401 there at one point, obviously before things started going well for him.

I also find myself drawn to a kind of pre-professional “innocence” of the period. They’re not really talking about academic writing—they’re talking about writing. The craft of writing. The writing process. There is a huge commitment to getting students to think of themselves as writers, to come up with creative exercises to foster writing and to help students produce interesting, engaging non-fiction prose. I think it’s this commitment to the production of a kind of steely non-fiction prose—not quite journalism, not academic writing, for SURE, that interests me. That’s what I fell in love with at UNH…the shoptalk, being included in the shoptalk about writing and about writers. That’s all gone for me now, it seems. But I find myself longing for that kind of course. UNH seemed to be a place where a faculty member from writing could create a writing course where one might read creative non-fiction or essays or even novels and one could be a faculty member from literature where one would teach…well, I’m not sure. But there was a certain kind of essayistic writing that was valued in the program and that was advocated for. Certainly, ENGL 401 at that time did not seem to be geared towards academic writing or the preparation for academic writing in the way we think of it now. They were shooting for something far broader, far higher-up and very different. It’s not hard to see why faculty from other disciplines would say that ENGL 401 was not teaching anything that really resembled academic writing, but students, like me, might come away saying that ENGL 401 was a favorite course and, in some ways, a course which changed their lives.