{"id":3411,"date":"2019-01-10T23:43:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T23:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/?p=3411"},"modified":"2019-02-08T22:50:36","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T22:50:36","slug":"lights-from-underground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/2019\/01\/10\/lights-from-underground\/","title":{"rendered":"Lights from Underground"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students who enrolled in the Honors College colloquium \u201cPublishing Underground\u201d probably did not expect the title to be literal. But one winter day, underground they went, led by instructors Korey Jackson and Kelly McElroy, into the dark basement of Fairbanks Hall to use an old-fashioned letterpress. There, students learned to set type and to print using this \u201cnew\u201d old technology.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Earlier, the class had been reading about Ida B. Wells, a journalist and activist during the late 19th<\/sup> century, and the trip to Fairbanks was inspired by the effort it took her to publish. \u201cWe saw that this is what it took to publish something,\u201d says Raven Waldron, a senior in bioresource research when she took the class. \u201cNot only were people putting so much of their reputation and livelihood on the line, but the time it took and the actual dedication it took to publish something \u2013 we got to do<\/em> that.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This mode of learning \u2013 which uses active experience to illuminate historical examples of underground publishing \u2013 was central to the design of the class. \u201cMaking stuff, reading stuff and talking about stuff in equal pieces [was our goal],\u201d says Kelly, the OSU Valley Library student engagement and outreach librarian. \u201cIt\u2019s a domain of learning that students are often cut off from. They\u2019re taking really advanced classes. It\u2019s nice to struggle to photocopy or lay pages out. It sparks something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

Two examples of student work from the class<\/p><\/div>\n

Students explored many different media during the class. The culmination was an \u201cunderground\u201d publishing project of their own. \u00a0And \u2013 true to the history of underground publishing \u2013 many of these projects went in very personal and activist directions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dani Tellvik, a senior in English when she took the class, created a literary magazine working alongside the Linn-Benton Community College Poet Laureate, Shane Stanhope. Dani\u2019s college career began at Linn-Benton, and she recalled the many passionate and talented creative writers there who lacked a space to connect. Her first challenge was getting the word out, no small task itself on a commuter campus. \u201cThe first poster had a toilet in a stall that said, \u2018Don\u2019t put it in the bathroom stall \u2013 send it to us,\u2019\u201d she recalls. \u201cWe took anything \u2013 a political rant, a few sentences, a doodle.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She called the publication \u201cOff the Record.\u201d \u201cI wanted to give voice to those people who didn\u2019t have a place to express it. People will stop talking and writing if they don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re being heard. We need everyone \u2013 not just people who are inclined to speak up \u2013 to know their voice is valuable and to start a dialogue and have conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t wait for approval,\u201d she says, \u201cwhich is a main point of publishing underground \u2013 that you don\u2019t have to have anyone\u2019s approval to publish.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Korey, the Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services at the OSU Valley Library when he co-taught the class last year with Kelly, says that part of the importance of the class is \u201cexploring ways that getting the message out is a mode of activism and is something anyone can engage in regardless of expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kelly adds that part of this lesson is that \u201cyou don\u2019t need someone\u2019s approval to get the message out; you don\u2019t have to post on Twitter. You can physically print something out and leave it on every bench on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For her project, Raven Waldron was inspired by Kelly\u2019s collection of zines, which she shared with the class. She found one by a Navajo author who wrote about growing up going to powwows. \u201cIt made me think about the poetry I\u2019ve written and how to bring out those themes in a zine. I took a spoken word piece and put in pictures, symbols that illustrated the stanzas, and it became a per-zine, a personal zine. I called it \u2018A Very Native Zine.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cUnderground publishing lacks some rules of institutional publishing structures,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt allows you to create a project that couldn\u2019t be in a book, walking that line of what we don\u2019t always talk about, our deeply personal experience. It\u2019s a way for those marginalized in society to find a voice. My poem talks about how I\u2019m marginalized, invisible, and by the end, how I found my voice, my community. It mirrored what we\u2019ve been talking about in underground publishing \u2013 for people of color, a story that isn\u2019t told, to bring that voice to the forefront, bring out voices that don\u2019t get told through traditional media representation.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Honors student Richard Smith became interested in the class\u2019s exploration of how technology affects a publishing space \u2013 what it means to draw on a wall versus put up a website. The course allowed him to explore intersections between his major, electrical engineering, and digital representations of art. He was able to think about a larger, human aspect to some of the problems engineers deal with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a piece of art or work that exists in the physical world, over time it experiences decay and weathering, and that affects the content of the message. I was exploring what it would be like if that happened with a computer, if it were to decay in the same way as a piece of paper when exposed to water.\u201d He wrote a program which keeps adding noise to a picture, puts out a new copy, adds more noise and continues. \u201cThere is something inherently human about this parsing and interpreting of a physical thing that you can\u2019t recreate with a piece of technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

Korey engaging the audience at a showcase of honors teaching.<\/p><\/div>\n

Kelly and Korey incorporated an \u201cunderground\u201d ethos into the way the course was designed, drawing on collective ideas and communally-agreed upon values. \u201cI\u2019ve never taken a class or colloquium like it,\u201d says Richard. \u201cIt was completely student-driven.\u201d He says decisions in the course were made by group consensus, and for the final project, they came up with their own evaluation rubric. \u201cIt was nice to be able to take a class where you can think about stuff and not worry about getting tested on it. We control, and they\u2019re there to guide.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For Kelly and Korey, this cultivation of community and different voices is at the heart of good pedagogy and the concept of underground publishing itself. \u201cThere are a lot of examples that you can\u2019t do this all on your own. Ida B. Wells had so many collaborators \u2013 whether seeking financial support or handing things out or sharing them. Social change doesn\u2019t happen by individuals \u2013 it\u2019s community,\u201d Kelly says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Adds Korey, \u201cWe\u2019ve come to think of publishing as commercial, that an individual author writes an individual text to sell to a large group of people we call an audience. But the reason people publish things is not to sell to an audience, but because they want to find a community \u2013 someone else who responds to what they think. The collaborative aspect of the class gets to the deeper roots of what publishing is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That spirit left a deep and lasting impression: Members of the class from 2018 are working on a zine for the Honors College itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the way the class was set up, we got to put so much of ourselves into it, we built deeper connections with people in the class. We thought we could take this other places, the connections that we built and the excitement and enthusiasm it created. We\u2019re excited to get out and do the things we learned in the class,\u201d Raven says. \u201cWe get so caught up in our school work we don\u2019t take the time to create. This is an outlet for honors students \u2013 not only for publishing but a way to connect with other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students who enrolled in the Honors College colloquium \u201cPublishing Underground\u201d probably did not expect the title to be literal. But one winter day, underground they went, led by instructors Korey Jackson and Kelly McElroy, into the dark basement of Fairbanks Hall to use an old-fashioned letterpress. There, students learned to set type and to print […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,1163416,1163399,82],"tags":[1163406,213002,196241,523],"class_list":["post-3411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","category-community","category-courses-faculty","category-features","tag-bioresource","tag-colloqia","tag-faculty-2","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3411"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3421,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3411\/revisions\/3421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/honorslink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}