Getting to Know First-Year SLIS Student Oliver Bendorf

1) Where are you from? Any interesting facts about your hometown?

I'm from Iowa City, Iowa, which was designated the world's third UNESCO City of Literature. My parents used to have these bright gold t-shirts that said "University of Iowa, Idaho City, Ohio" -- some people think these vowel-laden middle states are all the same, but they are not: Iowa has poets, but not so many potatoes.

2) When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? Elvis. Honestly. Also, at some point, "the President or a teacher," according to my papers. Somewhere along the way, I became a poet. And a teacher. But not the President!

3) What did you study as an undergraduate? Why?

I studied English Literature. And creative writing. And I minored in Women's Studies. And, because I'm a romantic, I took Italian for Travelers one semester. The class was me and a bunch of couples who were about to leave on their honeymoons to Florence or Capri and needed to pick up a few phrases.

4) If you were a cheese, what would you be? Why?

Oh, man. In a previous life I worked at a little cheese shop in Washington, DC, where I sliced the big wheels into little wedges and weighed them and wrapped them and set out little description cards for each cheese. I think I dreamed in cheese for six months straight. So this is a complicated question. Can I defer to an outside opinion? My girlfriend says "One that melts easily." Or maybe a goat cheese that tastes like the weeds in the meadow. (See #6)

5) Michael Jackson or Prince? Why?

Prince, because when I search on Google for the lyrics to Purple Rain, my browser freezes, which is kind of awesome. Prince has the power to crash Firefox!

6) Do you have any pets? Show us a picture!

Here are two out of my three pet goats. Actually you can also spot the third one, on the far right.

 

And my angora rabbits:

 

And one of my rabbits weighing in on special collections:

 

 

7) What historical figure do you think you would be friends with? Why?'

I would die and go to historical-figure heaven if I could be pen-pals with John Muir. Last year I read his letters and journals from Yosemite and it's like poetry. There's one where he describes himself as a "poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist etc. etc. !!!!" (Exclamation marks his, not mine.) I think we would have gotten along.

8) What are you most nervous about this semester? Why?

Moderating my caffeine intake so as not to combust.

9) What are you most looking forward to this semester? Why?

Making friends, making hedgehogs. Learning about information and archives.

10) What do you love about archives?!
What I love about archives is the same as, or close to, what I love about memory: we like to think that we can classify everything and store it perfectly and retrieve it in some orderly way, and it's satisfying to try, but there's also that wilder reality in which it's less predictable. And that's not to say that I'm against standards or rituals, because I'm not-- I like to memorize things when I want to keep them, or try to forget things I'd rather not remember. Archives transcend time and space, and it's hard not to love that. They feel true to me in terms of how memory can/could work on a collective level. I'm particularly fond of DIY/small press literary publications (like the Little Magazine Collection here at UW), writers' papers, zines, broadsides, mini-comics, queer and trans archives, etc.

An item from my archival t-shirt collection. Great camp.