university administration took notice and made moves to divert students back to the university-owned bookstore . And yet plenty of professors decided to order through Groundwork , and long lines of students with reading lists were a regular sight outside its doors every quarter . Groundwork stopped selling textbooks over the years , but it still remains a hub for students and a nexus of social and political activism .
To visit Groundwork Bookstore today is to take a trip back in time , with political posters and slogans of yesteryear hung alongside flyers for modern movements and contemporary calls for action . Couches and armchairs — maybe the very same it started with — invite you to sink into something off the shelves , with the smell of books wafting up to your nose as you flip through the pages . The collective still holds film showings and grassroots events , with dates and times and calls to action painted onto the windows , hoping to catch the attention of students passing through . That Groundwork remains is as much a testament to its significance on campus as it is a thing of awe for those who started it . Many of the founding collective members are surprised that the bookstore still exists almost 50 years later . “ I never dreamed it would continue as long as it did ,” says founding member Lincoln Cushing ’ 75 . But its longevity is owed to the generations of students who sought to make a difference and saw the collective as a means to make it . Whether on wheels or with decades of roots beneath , Groundwork has been a place to start for anyone who has felt similar to Wood way back when —“ I often thought , ‘ Someone has to do something ,’” she remembers . “ And then one night it occurred to me : I was someone .”
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POWERFUL PAGES Alumni authors tackle current issues
EMPOWERED by Sarah Banet-Weiser ’ 89 , MA ’ 90 , PhD ’ 95 Empowered addresses feminism in the age of social media , focusing on its use in advertising and various commercial and nonprofit campaigns . Banet-Weiser examines how the commercial appeal of feminism might actually encourage the misogynistic ideals that it rallies against by “ empowering ” those in relatively privileged positions .
RESISTING WAR : HOW COMMUNITIES PROTECT THEMSELVES by Oliver Kaplan ’ 01 Kaplan contests the typical depiction of civilian populations as victims by explaining how unarmed communities protect themselves from civil conflict and pressure armed groups to limit their violence . Looking at cases in Colombia , Afghanistan , Pakistan and Syria , Resisting War counters the traditional narrative and provides further understanding to the story of human struggle and survival during wartime .
ART FOR AN UNDIVIDED EARTH by Jessica L . Horton ’ 06 Art for an Undivided Earth explores the American Indian Movement by looking at how the Native American narrative was refigured by a generation of artists looking to define themselves and their culture . Horton ’ s discourse with contemporary indigenous artists also provides various theories about global modernism , racial differences , new modernism and how these elements are being reinvented by artists at the forefront of Native American art . — Hana Vaid ’ 21
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