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Preserving California’s Literary and Historical Legacy
One day at Fort Ord, a former Army base near Monterey, Associate Professor of English Terry Beers listened to a Native American Ohlone descendent talk about the area, and about the wild sedge used for making baskets that grew there, still tended by the Ohlone after centuries. As the woman talked, Beers could see mountain bikers riding by, old Army training fox holes, and a marker for the De Anza Trail used long ago by Spanish explorers. Time and the world seemed to come into sharp relief.
“I felt this tremendous awareness, of era on top of era, that we
Californians don’t often experience,” recalls Beers. “We constantly reinvent the state, and so, can miss out on any sense of our own heritage, of connectedness.”
Fortunately for Beers, and for a growing number of students in the Department of English, the California Legacy Project is providing ample opportunities to reconnect with the past—and help others do the same. Through a combination of strategic partnerships, scholarly cross-fertilization, and community outreach, Beers and his colleagues and assistants are in effect curating California’s multicultural literary and historical legacy and bringing it to a broad general audience. Publishing and public broadcastingIt started out as a partnership between Santa Clara University, the oldest institution of higher learning in California, and Heyday Books, one of the most respected publishers of Californiana. Heyday was publishing a book edited by Beers, an anthology of California landscape writing, when Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday and a legend in small press publishing, suggested to Beers the idea of creating a special series of books on California history, literature, and natural history.
Three years later, some 21 volumes have been published with the California Legacy imprint. The main idea, says Beers, is to bring back into circulation important out-of-print and overlooked books. Some of the titles have also sold quite well, such as Louise Amelia Clappe’s 1851–52 correspondence from the California mines, The Shirley Letters, which a number of schools adopted as a textbook.
In 2003 the project entered into another partnership, this time with KAZU–FM in Pacific Grove. Using professional actors for voice talent and source materials from the Heyday series of books, Beers and his colleagues and students are producing an anthology of dramatic readings of California literature and history. The 90-second segments air daily and some can be accessed as audio files from the project’s Web site, Opportunities for studentsCalifornia Legacy maintains other partnerships as well—with project scholars, for example, affiliated Santa Clara faculty in literature, history, and the social and natural sciences who contribute specific expertise in California studies. There are public events too, such as Natural History Day, co-sponsored with the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge, which included nature walks with docents and readings of natural history writing.
With all this work, Beers is fortunate to have the help of a number of student assistants—some writing study guides for the books, some writing radio scripts, some promoting events. 2004 California Legacy Intern Kristin Lenore did all of these, and more. In the final term of her senior year, she handled the publicity for Natural History Day; wrote a radio spot on Sarah Winemucca; scanned most of the sources for the text of a new book about the infamous Mussel Slough gunfight; and wrote a feature article about California Legacy for the spring issue of Santa Clara Magazine.
“She’s very bright and self-motivated, and has done all this very well,” says Beers. “And that’s great for our program, because we want our interns and other students to get real world experience that ends up adding to their personal portfolios, whether it’s a script or a study guide or a bylined article.” |
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