While scholars debate the origins of creative writing in the American academy, faculty at institutions like Harvard sometimes accepted fiction or poetry for class credit by the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries (Myers 283). If the following excerpt from the 1895 Quips and Cranks is not merely satirical, the same was true at Davidson.
The Davidson archives hold rich material in both print and digital forms, including multiple student literary publications, beginning when the
Eumenean and Philanthropic Literary Societies launched the Davidson Monthly in 1886. For example, the same issue of Quips and Cranks yields not only the passage above but also a satiric description of an English class as well as multiple student poems.
In this seminar, we will explore past literary activities and attitudes at Davidson. Exemplified by the work of Davidson’s Commission on Race and Slavery, revisiting our institutional past “with fresh, critical eyes” (Thelin xi) can provide what John Thelin terms “a source of renewal and rediscovery” (xi). Davidson’s students read and wrote creatively, whether “rimes” for class or personal “Heart-Foam,” long before formal creative writing instruction in our curriculum. Seminar participants will collaborate in uncovering evidence of student literary activity on campus, analyzing that evidence, and situating these activities amid literary trends and collegiate practices for digital publication.
- Teacher: Shireen Campbell