Once upon a time, twenty of Berkeley's finest English majors met twice weekly to think about poetry. In particular, they studied romantic poems that seemed hopeful and/or worried about connecting to a future audience.

So it was that

• fantasies about auditors or readers
• actual publication and reception histories
• openness to the future and its recontextualizations

became objects of study, as venerable British verse was held up to the light and even data-projected in Berkeley, California, in the spring of 2000.

That time is passed, and all its aching joys are now no more, and all its dizzy raptures.... But we've preserved some of our work here, scattering across the web to an unawakened earth.

Click on the images to the left to read standout one-page essays, trace publication histories, look at remapping of poems, browse web links collected over the semester, or scan a politely contentious chat board.

2003 update

Since AS&H continues to garner hundreds of hits a week, I've given it a redesign - it's less excruciating to look at, but not a word has been changed.

Comparative types may wish to look at The Romantic Audience Project, a seminar given at Bowdoin College covering much of the same reading. While AS&H is mostly a static HTML site, RAP is a collaborative Wiki: technology marches on.