in memoriam

The last class session or two of each semester are typically devoted to students sharing with each other the texts, objects or events they created in response to a task called “a history of ‘this’ space.”

In brief, the task was initially inspired by the dearth of information on students’ lived experiences in first-year comp classrooms. In this way, it provides students with whom I work the potential of communicating something (to future readers/discovers of these collections of histories) about who they were, what they did, valued, experienced, thought, etc. at a specific point in their college careers. Students are encouraged to approach the task by defining the specific space or spaces they are considering focusing on for their history. Following this, they must decide what it is about their space(s) they would like to represent for future readers/viewers and to determine the specific methodology/methodologies they will employ while collecting data on their designated history day. Lastly, students must determine the means by which they will represent their findings.


On December 7, 2006 the members of my play theory class participated in a memorial service for “the English 320 Fresh Stories” project. Before the service proper began, Elizabeth (the creator of what she referred to as an “installation history," and member of the group that devised and facilitated the “English 320 Fresh Stories” project) arranged on the large table in the front of the room, an electric candle, a small, rose- and dove-covered black box/coffin containing colored photographs of the dolls created during the “Fresh Stories” presentation session, a framed black and white photograph of the dolls sitting unused during the other class presentation, a spiral book with the words “In Memoriam” on the cover, and a second notebook titled “Book of Condolences.” Memorial cards were distributed to members of the class before the service began. After explaining why the service wouldn’t feature any organ music (i.e., she had too much to carry and couldn’t swing lugging a CD player to class), she asked for two volunteers to assist with readings she had specially selected for the service.

After clarifying what we were doing and who we were remembering (i.e., the dis-use, and so death, of the "fresh stories" dolls, and with this, the death of Elizabeth's vision of a web-based history), she asked the first volunteer to stand and read the Langston Hughes poem entitled “Dreams Deferred” that appeared on the back of the “in memoriam” cards we received at the start of the service. "What happens," the volunteer/speaker began, "to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore--and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

Following this, the second volunteer was asked to stand and deliver the second reading, an excerpt from one of the course's assigned readings, Douglas Hofstadter’s 1985 essay, “Variations on a Theme as the Crux of Creativity.”

“Strange though as it may sound,” this speaker began, “nondeliberate yet nonaccidental slippage permeates our mental processes, and is the very crux of fluid thought. That is my firmly held conviction. This subconscious manufacture of ‘subjunctive variations on a theme’ is something that goes on day and night in each of us, usually without our slightest awareness of it. It is one of those things that, like air or gravity or three-dimensionality, tend to elude our perception because they define the very fabric of our lives.”

After thanking her reader/volunteers, Elizabeth concluded the ceremony by passing around the "Book of Condolences," urging people to write something to and/or about the dolls. There was some confusion from members of the class who happened to be absent the days the dolls were constructed. One person in particular asked if she should "still write something even though she had never actually met the dolls."

At this time, the spiral-bound “In Memoriam” book was also passed around for the other members of the class to look at. Here, Elizabeth meticulously documents the too-brief life of her “fresh stories” dream. The book includes a much-reduced (i.e., in size or magnification) copy of the Stein article, a photograph of the cover of the collection the article was originally published in, color photos of Stein and Kress, and copies of all the documents produced before, during, and after the “fresh stories” presentation. Included here are the itinerary/objectives for the in-class presentations, the written narratives produced before and after the doll-making session, photos taken during the session, images and snippets of conversations that appeared on the facebook “fresh stories” page and emails that were exchanged between Elizabeth and myself after the “fresh stories” presentation. In one of the emails, Elizabeth suggests that one of her “main goals” with the facebook site was to have Pippa Stein see the work we did in class, join the group and/or post a response. The final page of the “life-book” features an image of the dolls sitting unused on the ledge of the room we used for the Kress presentation. Above the image, is a print out of one of the final emails she sent me concerning the status of her history: “I don’t know,” she writes, “what will become of my history or the website etc. . . . . :( ”