The Way We Were

As a cultural historian I am very conscious of the importance of particular spaces and places as sites of memory … for individuals, groups, even entire nations … and often these continue to have political and social resonances many centuries later.  Just ask Serbs about the significance of Kosovo, for example.  It is a place that has been deeply ingrained into their national memory since the15th day of June in the year 1389.

On a much more prosaic level, indeed completely at the other end of the spectrum of importance, are two places on our campus where I spent some time this past weekend, both located in the upper reaches of the Dunton Tower.  When first built, the Dunton Tower was known as the “Arts Tower”, and the room on the 20^th floor which now serves as the FASS boardroom was called the Arts “lounge” … and in my students days of the early 1970s it did indeed function in that fashion for faculty and staff.  Before long, however, DT 2017 also began to be pressed into service for other events, including public lectures, as remains the case today.  In the fall of 1978, during my time as a doctoral student at the University of London, I made a brief trip back to North America to attend a conference at the University of Michigan, and I was invited by one of my former Carleton professors, Clifford Brown, to give a public lecture … which I did.  It was my first ever public lecture, and hence a memorable moment in my academic career.  I have lost count of how many I have given since, but I am not likely to forget that first one … my first formal recognition as a scholar, and thus a moment of considerable personal significance.  The location of this talk was DT 2017, the site this past weekend of a national conference of medieval art historians which I organized and hosted.  Listening to papers about medieval Europe over the course of the two-day event brought back some vivid memories of my first time speaking in that same space.  Somehow, it seemed like the right place to be.

For the conference’s Saturday lunch, the Institutes of Interdisciplinary Studies and Cognitive Science had kindly made available their seminar room two floors above, DT 2203.  This brought back to mind an even older memory, going back to my days as an undergraduate student.  When the Tower first opened, the 22^nd floor was occupied by the Dept. of Art History, and 2203 was the location of the “slide library”, housing the collection of many thousands of coloured slides used to illustrate art history lectures, as well as viewing tables at which students could review the images shown by their professors in the previous week.  In order to increase the access time for this purpose, a student – in 1972-73, me – was hired to open the room for two hours every Saturday morning.  It was hardly an onerous task, and there was a dedicated coterie of students who turned up faithfully most weeks, creating a sort of informal and unmoderated discussion group from which we all derived much benefit.  And again, it seemed somehow right to be spending part of a Saturday morning in that space, discussing matters of medieval art history as I had done some 40 years previously.

I am sure that many if not most university graduates have particular places on the campus of their ‘alma mater’ which conjure up memories, perhaps both good and bad.  And it is often these memories which bind us to the institution in ways that we may not acknowledge consciously.  My wish for all Carleton students is that they will find their own particular sites of memory on this campus … and that those memories will be good ones.  I hope so.