When Owen Roberts ’07 sought funding to publish The University Comics Anthology, the Student Budgetary Committee (SBC) said that not only could they not meet his precise demand, but his budget would, in fact, be smaller than the previous year’s.
While disappointing for Roberts, the decision can be traced back to the growing array of student-run publications on campus, among them psychology journals, historical digests, art magazines, and literary compendiums. The selection gets more extensive and diverse each semester as students seek outlets for their artistic and intellectual talents.
“I wanted to bring together people interested in comics,” said Roberts, who single-handedly organizes the production of this biannual assortment of graphic narratives. “My goal is to facilitate collaborations between artists and writers.”
As Roberts worked on his first issue in the spring of 2006, the undergraduate psychology students were busy creating another forum for the exchange of ideas. With its inaugural issue released in April, Mind Matters: the Wesleyan Journal of Psychology aims to take learning and research out of the classroom.
“There is high-quality student research going on here,” said Steve Wengrovitz ’06, one of the founding editors. “We realized the need for people to share this research.”
Having already doubled its number of submissions in one year, the staff continues to follow a blind, peer-review process. The editors then work individually with the chosen contributors on weekly basis to produce this annual journal.
“We would love to have everyone’s suggestions,” Wengrovitz said. “This is a purely student-run effort, [with] professors acting only as consultants.”
Mind Matters comes at the heels of a veteran academic journal, Historical Narratives, which is an annual publication put out by history majors.
“We aim to show that the history department is doing impressive and important things,” said Abe Silk ’07, one of the editors, who claims that Narratives, while only five years old, is the first all-student run journal on campus.
Comprised of creative papers related to the study of history, book reviews and Thesis abstracts, Narratives is freely distributed to all history majors and Professors, and welcomes input from all disciplines.
“We are looking for papers that approach [and] say something in a way that is a little different than textbook history,” said Anne Lodick ’07.
The editors are also reaching out to students of Art History and Anthropology, hoping to expand their base. “We are working this year to branch out and get articles on underrepresented areas of history,” Lodick explained.
Farther away from the work of history and psychology scholars, Wesleyan poets express their thoughts in The Hangman’s Lime.
“Our mission is to be an outlet for the voices of undergrad poets at Wesleyan,” said Leah Campbell ’09, the magazine’s editor.
Deriving its name from a poem by Dylan Thomas, the annually produced poetry magazine is in its fourteenth year of publication. Collaborations at open meetings in the Campus Center every Thursday result in the final selection of ten poetry submissions for each issue.
“We want to encourage open discussion about poetry because we believe in the value of a community of poets,” Campbell said.
While The Hangman’s Lime is known for its longevity, one magazine that came close to extinction is The Handprint. As its all-senior staff graduated in 2006, it fell upon an entirely new team to keep this creative non-fiction journal alive.
“The purpose was to tell true stories in a true way through photos, drawings, poetry, plays, etc,” said Amanda Thieroff ’06, who co-founded the journal two years ago.
That mission has still been preserved in the current biannual publication of The Handprint, which, though mainly focused on memoirs, features student work ranging from poetry to art.
“By limiting it to non-fiction, we are not being restrictive, we are trying to be unique,” said Maggie Filler ’07, one of the eight students who manage the journal. “It is to show that creative non-fiction is a valid literary form that tends to get overshadowed,” she said.
Described by Filler as an intimate, almost diary-like journal, The Handprint adheres to a strictly anonymous reviewing process and is freely distributed around campus.
Breaking the barriers of the University, however, is WESU Magazine, which accompanies WESU radio and serves students as well as Middletown residents.
“It is not a community service, we are creating a joint project,” said Andrea Silenzi ’07, the Editor-in-Chief. “We have to promote the entirety of the radio station,” she added. Distributed in the Library of Hartford, Barnes and Nobles and various coffee shops, WESU magazine has half of its audience outside of the University.
WESU DJs, community members, and students all pitch in and contributing art, essays, photos and poetry on subjects ranging from music and radio to culture and community. “Just like the radio station, we hope to promote the free-form genre,” said Assistant Editor Mae Klinger ’07. “We have a much broader style and level of things coming in than other publications.”
According to Silenzi, the magazine, which is published about three times every year, aims to recognize uniqueness, not perfection.
“We do not want to lose what is really interesting about them,” Silenzi said. “So the copy editors get a lot of feedback from the artists and work closely for improvement.”
And the list of a wide variety of student publication goes on. Look out for the biannual publications to be released over the course of November, while the rest of them (produced annually) will make their way all over the campus in the spring.
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