Thinking About Joel Joneitz

I was vaguely amused the other day when I was forwarded an email from Humanities ND. It was asking local scholars of the humanities to give time to support programing in the humanities in the state.

This struck me as pretty ironic. About a decade ago, I asked Humanities ND to help support North Dakota Quarterly when we had lost funding. I asked for a very modest some of money and the conversation went nowhere. In fact, one thing floated was that since Humanities ND had a magazine, I was asking them to support a “rival publication.” To be clear, NDQ was not some upstart public humanities publication. It has a century-long history to its name and hundreds of issues under its belt. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to claim that NDQ is the state’s premier humanities publication. 

(I know this paragraph sounds petty, and I’m doing the best I can to extend Humanities ND some grace. Situations change and I want to be supportive, but I also wonder whether Humanities ND as an institution has the capacity to grow the humanities in the state.)

At around the same time, Joel Jonientz and I started The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota. If NDQ was largely an institutional magazine and historically supported by the University of North Dakota, The Digital Press was destined to become a non-, if not anti-institutionalist publishing operation. As much as we talked about the founding principles of our operation, we had a vague notion that it would be grounded in some kind of punk practice. Perhaps it would be vaguely anarchist in organization, but not formally so. Instead, it would be a hodgepodge of collaboration, conviviality, and cooperation. 

It has largely remained this way for its decade long existence. I like to think that the Digital Press (and to a certain extent, NDQ) offers a model for resilient humanities.

This seems like something fitting to remember on the eleventh anniversary of Joel Jonientz’s passing.