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30.
FREE UNIVERSITY OF NEW ENGLAND. A broken run of five FUNE catalogues, from a total of six issued (lacks #4).
Amherst, Mass.: Clearinghouse, University of Massachusetts School of Education, nd. (c. January 1971 - June 1972). 4to. First three issues designed to be bound Japanese-style with string, though string present only in #3 (the other two gathered by staple); #5 and #6 side-stapled. Unpaginated (18pp.-80pp.). Texts printed typescript and in holograph facsimile. Illustrated with photographs, drawings, diagrams, cartoons and clip art.
The Free University of New England was an umbrella heading for a network of social and educational activities throughout the Northeastern region organised by the Clearinghouse for Student-Initiated Change in Higher Education, a student-run project operating out of the University of Massachusetts with the intention to put “media, institutional, information and money resources directly into the hands of the people who need them.”
The FUNE catalogues were assembled by groups and individuals (among them Betsy Oliver, Patsy Parker, Rick Kean and Alan Potter) who provided “resources for learning” related to a range of “change projects and trends organized by interest areas.” These included Student Housing/Environment; Experimental Colleges and Free Universities; Hotlines and Crisis Centers; Media (underground papers, cable TV and videotape collectives); Male and Female Sexual Liberation Workshops (the third issue devoted 40+ pages to a Women’s Catalogue); Gay Liberation; the Black community; Health and Free Clinics; Ecology; Food Co-ops; Community Action; and a People’s Yellow Pages.
When Clearinghouse ran out of funds after FUNE’s sixth and final issue in June 1972, they “decided to let the project die”, though in their valedictory statement the collective wrote of how they felt “pretty good” that their “goal of establishing communication links between groups and individuals in New England has really happened in a lot of areas.”
Mailing label of Movement activist Michael Rossman to back cover of #6; faint cover stains and marking; o/w Very Good. A rare, almost complete run of this regional attempt at countercultural networking, much in the spirit of the Whole Earth Catalogue and Radical Software.
Price:
£150.00
