Owen Watson

= Division III =

''This article is part of a Climax Div III Issue. By Henry Parr, Managing Editor. ''

In his four years at Hampshire College, Owen Watson has played a number of different roles. He is part of the band The Faculty, an avid baseball fan, and a core member of the Hampshire soccer team. Academically, he has been similarly diverse, moving from music to literature to architecture and, at long last, to American studies and creative writing. His Division III, Collective Memory and the American Experience: A Novella, is a ninety-page fiction piece that takes place in October 1975 and tracks the relationship between the protagonist, Jack, and his sister as they come to terms with their late father and his past. This narrative is coupled by an abstract conversation between Jack and his father in a bare, white room.

In the process of writing, Watson found the story working around the idea of collective American memory. “It started out as a children’s story and then a thing about post-apocalyptic American, and then it really turned into trying understand ideas of collective American memory: the notion that we all carry memories, whether they are interpreted through media or YouTube, of really classic or huge events that are portrayed as historic. It also turned into an outlet for storytelling of under-told stories of my parents’ experiences with their parents and the late 60s and 70s. There are echoes of my dad’s time in the army during Vietnam and his relationship with his father.” Ultimately the work tried to portray how these collective stories or memories can lack a degree of sincerity. As Watson stated, “sometimes under-told stories are more indicative of who we are as people rather than the stories that we tell all the time.”

Though Watson has moved around academically, American studies has always been a constant theme in his studies and time here at Hampshire. After Hampshire, he intends on working for City Year or some other AmeriCorps program before he pursues graduate studies in public policy or law.