Welcome
This archive explores the function, experience, and impact of work at the University of Michigan’s New England Literature Program. The Program’s structure around and focus on communal living renders it unique in the realm of higher education, and artifacts from past program sessions are suffused with rumination on and ephemera from labor such as cooking, cleaning, and working the earth.
The near-majority of materials comprising this Archive are drawn from the New England Literature Program records at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library. These records include program and curriculum development, staff materials, publicity or media representation, and excerpts from student journals written at NELP collected in annual anthologies edited by and distributed among students themselves. These records span the years of 1975, when the program was inaugurated, to 2007. A handful of entities that represent student experiences on NELP since 2007 have been donated to and included in this archive.
To use this Archive: Hit the red-on-gray Next icon at the bottom of each page to toggle through the Archive, or use the tabs up top to browse according to your interest. Check out the History of NELP page to learn a little more about the New England Literature Program and where it came from. The Philosophy of work page outlines how NELP is programmatically structured around physical work and meant to stoke personal reflection on the philosophical underpinnings of communal living. The Kitchen work page explores the labor (and joy!) that NELPers experience in the camp’s infamous communal kitchen. Maintenance work walks through student expectations, experiences, and reflections on cleaning camp at NELP. The Earth work page represents student experiences working outdoors and in nature during NELP. Works cited lists the resources that made this archive possible, and Browse will allow you to peruse all the artifacts presented as one giant collection.