Opening address by: Mary Emma Harris, “The Spirit of Black Mountain College”

Tribute to Jonathan Williams: Remembering Jonathan Williams (1929-2008)
Jonathan Williams photo by Roger Manley

Poet, publisher, and photographer Jonathan Chamberlain Williams, founder of The Jargon Society press, one of the most renowned small presses of the last half of the twentieth century, and champion and publisher of some of the most important mid- and late-century poets in the United States and England, died on March 16, 2008 in Highlands, North Carolina. Williams, 79, began his avant-garde press while a student at the Chicago Institute of Design, naming it "Jargon" not only for its meaning of personal idiom but also after the French spring pear, "jargonelle," and the French "jargon," meaning the twittering of birds. (Jeffery Beam)

Mary Emma Harris is director of the Black Mountain College Project (bmcproject.org), which preserves and documents the history and influence of BMC’s unique educational experiment, Harris has studied the college for over thirty years, first learning of it as an Art History student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Author of The Arts at Black Mountain College, her upcoming work includes the establishment of a comprehensive BMC collection at the Asheville Museum of Art.