Take Note and Remember: The Commonplace Book and Its American Descendants

FAIN: FS-231100-15

Winthrop University (Rock Hill, SC 29733-7001)
Laura Catherine Gardner (Project Director: February 2015 to February 2017)

A two-week seminar for sixteen college and university teachers to explore the development of the commonplace book and regional examples of its American descendants.

Feeling overwhelmed with facts, figures, data, details, and experiences is not unique to the digital age. Commonplace books and their descendant, the scrapbook, came into being for just that reason. We have two primary goals for our seminar: 1. To create a learning community of humanities scholars with whom we will look closely at examples of material culture. We will put them into historical context to ground theoretical discussion of commonplacing and scrapbooking. And 2: To research previously overlooked material found in Western North Carolina regional collections, artifacts that may have been passed over as insignificant by prevailing standards of the past. We will take a look at this material with a fresh eye - move it to the center to study from various disciplines - to look at what was being collected and why. We will examine closely material that is no longer looked at as detritus, but rather as attempts to make sense of life.

Associated Products

Precursors to the Digital Age: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and More -- Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick Gallery, Winthrop University Rock Hill, SC (Exhibition)
Title: Precursors to the Digital Age: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and More -- Elizabeth Dunlap Patrick Gallery, Winthrop University Rock Hill, SC
Curator: Laura Gardner and Laura Dufresne
Abstract: This interdisciplinary and multi-media exhibition contains work from the 2016 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for University Educators hosted at UNC Asheville, NC. Lead by Winthrop University Fine Arts Professors Drs. Laura Gardner and Laura Dufresne, the sixteen participants researched evolving forms of note taking and remembering throughout history via speakers and book making workshops, as well as archival and museum collection research. The exhibition highlights the diverse, interdisciplinary responses to the two-week seminar, as seen through scholar participants’ art, creative writing, book forms, and teaching.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://www.winthrop.edu/galleries/
Secondary URL: https://twitter.com/winthropgallery

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