“Athenaeum” is a latin word, derived from the name of the Greek goddess Athena. In its modern
usage “Athenaeum” refers to a building where books and newspapers are stored, or
alternatively, a “literary or scientific association” according to Merriam-Webster. The word is said
to have first been coined in its modern usage in 1799. Sixty-one years later, in 1860, Acadia’s
Athenaeum Literary Society was formed, and in 1874 they would start the Athenaeum Journal.
Today known simply as the Athenaeum, it has been Acadia’s student newspaper for over
one-hundred-and-fifty years, more or less.
If you were to look through old issues of the Ath (short for Athenaeum), which I had the
privilege of doing while working with the archives team to create digital copies of them, you
would come away with the conclusion that the Ath has an eclectic history. The early issues are
formatted more like the digest magazines you walk past, and likely ignore, with small pages
bunched together into little booklets of poetry, essays, and short fiction. This was the format of
the Ath from its inception in 1874 through The First World War and heading into The Second
World War. I began with issues from the 1930’s while I was working through the archives, and
had the weird experience of reading an essay discussing Germany starting a war in Europe as
something that could happen.
Post war the Ath transitioned to a weekly paper, and shifted towards focusing on current news in
Canada and on Campus. Additionally, there was a growing selection of comic strips, including
running titles that were part of the underground comic movement. This has evolved into the
current status of the Ath where, especially after the 2020 pandemic, we post most of our
material directly to our website. We also compile themed print editions once a year, or semester,
depending on how the wind blows.
The purpose of this history is to answer a question you may be asking if you’re curious about
writing for the Athenaeum; what are we looking for? The answer is we’re looking for pretty much
everything. We’ve run local news, national news, global news, essays, short fiction, poetry,
photography, comics and more. If you want to create it, and think people want to read it; we’d
love to hear from you.
I believe that one of the most important aspects of the Ath within the Acadia community is
serving as a place to make things for the sake of making them. Most of the people who write for
us are involved in the arts, whether through their education or simply personal passion, and the
Ath is an opportunity to write things without a grade attached. The Ath is a space to share your
writing, and make something good for the sake of making something good. Sure, there are ways
that if you angle it right the Ath could be a career boon, I’m definitely putting “Editor in Chief for
The Athenaeum” on my resume, but I started working for the Ath because I wanted an outlet for
my writing, drawing, and creativity. If you’re also looking for that, come swing by
