Publishing 101

In this collaborative class, American studies students put together their own on-line academic journal.

Not all college courses involve a professor lecturing to a dozen students. Some are far more active than that. Take, for instance, the class Engaging the Public: Writing and Publishing in American Studies. Here’s a course in which the enrolled students form the editorial collective for an on-line journal. To succeed, classmates must build a community, collaborate, and compromise in order to build the final product—an on-line journal called Tapestries: Interwoven Voices of Local and Global Identities, published on Macalester’s Digital Commons.

One of the most important things they learn, says Caroline Karanja ’12 (Madison, Wis.), is “Collaboration—working with other people; not necessarily seeing eye to eye but learning how to compromise. Because it’s a group editorial board, it makes things a little more difficult. You have to listen to everyone else—that’s been a really important thing for me to learn.”

This hands-on American Studies course is co-taught by department chair Jane Rhodes and library director Terri Fishel. It took a few years to develop the class, says Rhodes, which has turned out differently from most. “It’s not the kind of class where the professor is imparting knowledge to students,” says Rhodes. “It’s a completely different experience, which is really fun for me. I have to back up and not always be the one in charge and let them made the decisions.”

It’s been such a hit that some students, including Lauren Elizabeth Johnson ’13 (New Orleans) have taken the course two years in a row.

“Everyone is coming from a different perspective,” says Jade Johnson ’12. “It may not be my viewpoint, but is it worth being shared? That’s the bigger question.”

“I’ve always been really interested in reporting and in sharing my writing, so I thought it would be great to work on Tapestries,” says Johnson. “It’s all about redefining scholarship and using many different avenues to do that.”

The class focuses on writing, editing and preparing journal articles, videos, and music for digital publication. Student editors consider how to engage with readers and viewers both within and outside the Mac community while gathering material and being part of a collaborative model for circulating scholarship, art, and criticism. Tapestries weaves together multiple histories, voices, and languages, exploring issues pertaining to race, gender, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

The class covers all aspects of publication, including editing, design, peer review, fact checking, copyright and intellectual property, and open access. Entries can be research articles, creative works, or mixed-media submissions.

Creating a journal by and for students was really important, says Jade Johnson ’12 (Brooklyn, N.Y.), who was surprised they could accept music and video entries as well as traditional academic papers. “It’s important to value intellectual expression outside the classic student paper model,” she says. Examples of such nontraditional entries in last spring’s course included a slam spoken word poem called “Orientation Day” by Spencer Retelle ’11 and a series of paintings with short commentary titled “Rage” by Bimbola Akinbola ’11.

It was crucial to keep an open mind when reviewing submissions for Tapestries, says Johnson. “Everyone is coming from a different perspective,” she points out. “It may not be my viewpoint, but is it worth being shared? That’s the bigger question.”

For Johnson and her classmates, this course is pure Macalester. As she puts it, “Mac allows you to ask and answer a lot of questions you wouldn’t be able to pursue at other colleges.”