Browse Exhibits (7 total)

The Sweet Shop: A Campus Connected Through Time

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This exhibit highlights the casual and nonrestrictive characteristics and allowances that everyday writing provides. More specifically, how everyday writing is present in an iconic establishment on a college campus as such is seen in The Sweet Shop on Florida State University's campus. The Sweet Shop was established on campus in 1921. While it has seen some changes, the walls inside are filled with alumni and current students' signatures and writings. The business has encouraged customer participation to leave their mark however they desire on their walls, with signatures dating back to the 1940s and proceeding into the present day. Writing on these walls is a rite of passage for many Florida State University students.

Theresa Lillis defines everyday writing in the article "Writing as Everyday Practice" in the sense that "writing is not one thing, but involves many different kinds of materials, technologies, and practices including various kinds of relations around texts…made available and learned (or not) through the specific contexts we inhabit and used in different ways for different purposes" (92). The exhibit will focus on three commonalities in style and type of writing found on The Sweet Shop's walls. While perusing the walls, some of the most popular signatures and messages include couples marking their names or initials, school spirit, and miscellaneous notes that spark conversation with others or create a unique message.

As names and messages are added by past and present students at Florida State University, a connection is forged across time between the creators. While it is not entirely for certain what years individuals created their text even with graduation years accompanied as many have returned to the establishment years later to leave their signatures. However, it is known that when a person writes on the walls, they become a part of a narrative. Making their mark to show that they align themselves with everyone else on the walls, they are unified in the sense that at some point, they were all college students with the same problems and worries sitting at the edge of the unknown. All of which is displayed within an environment that plays a vital role in the college experience for many. It provides an opportunity to create community and look back throughout history and connect with those college students of the past who sat in the same places and walked the same campus; how were their college experiences and memories the same or different?

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Turning a Dorm Into a Home

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Many college kids live in dorms each year. The transition from living at home to living in a new city/place can be shocking for many. However, dorms become a safe haven where students can express their individuality. Through this, college students make their dorms a home. When decorating a dorm, everyday writing becomes a way of turning a blank room into a safe space. Everyday writing is seen in almost every dorm; this type of writing is often overlooked. 

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A journey through high school planners

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Planners became incredibly versatile: from the old paper-based to digital, the idea of planners and planning underwent a huge transformation in terms of materiality and physical presence in individuals’ existence. However, there are some environments that still require physical planners, high schools for example, to transcribe homework and announcements addressed to the student’s family. 

This exhibit looks at the author’s high school journey through her planners with a detail in mind: she went to high school in Italy and spent her life in Turin, in the north-west. Unlike the U.S., high school lasts five years, which means that schools ends when students are 19 or turning 19 during their 5th years. As most of her peers, the author worked on her planners to personalize them and to leave her unique touch: the colors, the handwritten sentence on every cover, the stickers, the photos create a sort of artwork that carries value over time and tells stories of hobbies, grades and life events of a teenager.

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Post-Hurricane Compostions: Everyday Writing in the Face of Tragedy

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On October 10, 2018, Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle.  Hurricane Michael was deemed "the strongest hurricane ever to come ashore along the Florida Panhandle in records dating back to 1851."  Floridians were unprepared for the hurricane's intensity, and countless homes and properties were lost in the storm's wake.

A large-scale tragedy, such as a natural disaster, brings about unwanted and unexpected changes to societies and social groups.  As a result, the everyday writing in these societies takes a much different form from the norm.  These unorthodox pieces of writing are altered by the atmosphere of tragedy and the desire to overcome it.  Important everyday writing will always be made, even if it must be conveyed through the use of materials that aren't your average pen and paper. 

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Watercolors as Windows: Great Aunt Carol's Hand-Painted/Written Cards

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This exhibit showcases the work of Carol A. Kiefel through a series of hand-painted greeting cards with handwritten text. Although she created and mailed these cards to a number of family members and friends, all of the cards in this exhibit were maiiled to me, Jessi Thomsen, her great niece. Reading across and between these cards, I analyze the underlying currents and meanings of her original images and text and the insights about everyday writing that might be gained at the intersection of verbal and visual. The exhibit also acts as a window to see the dynamics of life events of both sender and receiver and the affect attached to those events, words, images, and relationships.

Start by navigating to the Gallery as Introduction to view the full set of fifteen greeting cards. Then, browse through the other pages to see specific cards put in conversation with each other within the context of everyday writing.

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Poetry, My Name is Dad

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Poetry is known for its creative ingenuity, and as an engine of expression. Poems can be written for a myriad of reasons, but they hold a technical level that is more complex, in some respects, to other forms of circulated works: such as novels, short stories or essays. As a tool of everyday writing, poems can represent this definition through non-academic or work-related creation. Poetry is an abstract art that can discern the identity of the individual: the artist. Through poetry, culture and personal identity can be revealed through form and content.

This exhibit wishes to showcase the poems of a single individual: Roshan Ramhit. Roshan Ramhit was born on the island of Trinidad and Tobago. This island is located off the coast of South America in the Caribbean; the island is shaped like a boot. He grew up on the island and spent his youth there. It was only during his university years that he left Trinidad and moved to New York.

His works are written during his college years, and show off his identity to me as a father. As a man of distinct cultural background, his poems are also capable of enlightening on his childhood experiences and the culture he grew up in.

Several themes throughout his poetry are that of loneliness and homesickness. Roshan Ramhit explained, “Yeah, from home to school there was an hour of travel. So it [writing poetry] was to wait the time away. Also moving to a new environment [from Trinidad to New York], leaving my friends behind…, it was lonely. It was to take out frustration, loneliness and whatever else.”

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Memes: Cultural Snapshots

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The Internet has transformed everyday writing. No longer is everyday writing restricted to physical vehicles such as letters or papers. Through technology, digital writing is at the forefront—and even more ephemeral in the fast paced technological landscape. Out of this fast turnover, one medium has managed to survive long enough to become a cultural staple: memes. Memes, in a literal sense, can be defined as combining text and images in order to relay a message, however in a broader, more figurative sense, they can be described as cultural snapshots. Richard Dawkins coined the term in his 1976 book The Selfish Genre defining it as an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. This spread of memes creates a general understanding of them amongst us, thus giving them a communal sense.

Everyday writing is a facet of writing that includes works of a casual nature—meaning the purpose of such writing is not for professional means, but rather means of convenience. Everyday writing embodies the everyday, from grocery lists, annotated notes, jotted down details, etc., it is a style of writing that captures the moment of its creation. There are memes that reference cultural phenomena like elections, celebrities, societal issues, and more, giving people a glimpse of the time they were created in. Memes fit into this category in two ways. One of which is that they can be created by anyone. All they require is an image and some text. The second way is that they too capture the moment of their creation.

Memes change as fast as the world around us, and people are becoming quick to create new ones to address these changes. People even use them as a means of communication (i.e. sending a meme or a GIF as opposed to a standard text message). Perhaps the reason behind the longevity of memes is how relatable they are to the millennial generation. Memes are shared so much and through so many channels that tracing them back to their original source can be a daunting task—cementing them as forms of everyday writing. In most cases, the source of a piece of everyday writing is unknown to all except the composer, so in this sense, memes are able to continually exist in the space of our lives. 

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