All Things ASE
ASE’s Alums: new bonds, new friendships, and new, nerdy message threads.
One of the great strengths of ASE is how the alumni community bond within and across the semesters and summers, making it a programme that lasts not just for 15 weeks but a lifetime.
In this piece alumni Stephen Weber (Su98, Denison) describes the friendships that bloomed from in our Continuing Education courses, run during the Covid lockdowns.
Three of the Victorian Widows Club; Stephen Weber (Su98), Rachel Podber-Kennison (Sp14) and Emily Cranfill (Sp14)
I was one of the last guests to arrive in Atlanta the night before Rachel Podber and Alex Kennison’s wedding. It was 11:00pm and I was exhausted, having rushed from work straight to JFK airport in New York a few hours earlier. I was planning to drop my luggage off in the room before coming down to say hello to everyone – like Lady Violet Crawley, at my age, one must ration one’s excitement – but Rachel and Emily Cranfill, both ASE alums from the Spring 2014 semester, saw me checking in and had other plans. They ran over and, in a riot of laughter and gleeful screaming, we put on quite a show for the receptionist who hadn’t yet finished checking me in. But who could blame us? It was our first time meeting each other!
In person, that is.
ASE’s 2023 NYC reunion party saw nearly 50 alums attending from across the 30 years of the programme.
If you’re an ASE alum I don’t have to tell you what an impact living and studying in Bath has had on my life because I already know it’s shaped your life in wonderful ways, too. My involvement with ASE spans the centuries – well, the 20th and 21st; I was a student on the programme in the Summer of 1998, and after I graduated from Denison University I worked at ASE as a Graduate Intern for the 2000-01 academic year. Since then I’ve attended every reunion in the New York City area and returned to Bath several times, and along the way I’ve made friends with quite a few other alums. No surprise in that – we tend to be an interesting, sociable group of individuals.
I was surprised, though, that I left the lockdown era of the pandemic with a whole new group of ASE friends whom I met taking the online alumni courses. Signing up for the courses felt like a solemn duty: we had to do whatever it took to help keep ASE financially afloat through the pandemic! The fact that the courses themselves were excellent was no surprise – ASE courses always are – so I expected intellectual stimulation (and got it!). I’m not surprised, either, that I look back on that part of that era fondly; I took courses during six of the seven “semesters” and found them to be a great source of joy and solace during a chaotic time.
But I am surprised by the friendships, or, rather, the depth and quality of the friendships forged via zoom (of all places!). I don’t remember really when or why it happened, but a Facebook Messenger thread got started with myself, Emily, Rachel and Wes Hershner (Summer 2011/Fall 2012). We met in that first session of classes, in Rob Jones’s Chivalry course, found we were all eager to share our thoughts and soon started sharing them outside of class. Because our chats were so centered around historical gossip (“What’s your opinion about the princes in the tower?...Well, d’you know what I heard?...”), gin-based cocktails and knitting (well…mostly just me showing off my latest pandemic project), we decided we were like a bunch of Victorian widows sitting around the fireplace late into the night, laughing and enjoying each others’ company immensely.
So, we changed the name of our thread to the Victorian Widows Club (the name first came up during a special Zoom chat with Andrew Butterworth that we all attended), and this leant itself to all kinds of wonderful in-group branding. We’ve had Victorian Widows Club movie nights, VWC book discussions, we even had our first annual holiday gift exchange – Victorian Widowmas! – which featured a video from Dan Jones wishing us a Happy Widowmas! (Look him up on cameo.com; thirty bucks can get you a personalized video from a dreamy medievalist! Rob Jones was our first choice, but his rates were too high… 😉). Between these fun events, our chat was filled with endless memes and hours of witty repartee.
But never in person. Not until Rachel’s wedding.
Dan Jones made a video appearance for that occasion as well. He was asked to weigh in as to whether or not Rachel could remain in the Victorian Widows Club if she were married. Fortunately he stated very confidently that she could and a tense scene was avoided.
Wes, unfortunately, was not able to make the wedding, so there’s another first meeting still in the future for all of us. But the wedding guests included quite a few other ASE alums who were all seated together, so my acquaintance among the ASE family continues to grow. I don’t know if the Victorian Widows Club is accepting new members (this would need to be discussed by the executive council in person over tea at Sally Lunn’s), but there’s certainly the possibility of new bonds, new friendships – and new, nerdy message threads – in the ASE alumni universe (alumniverse?), so I encourage everyone to remain involved. Your semester may be over, but ASE isn’t done bringing wonderful things into your life!
(Oh, and for the record, we all believe that Richard III had a hand in the disappearance of the princes, but not as brazenly or directly as Shakespeare would have us believe. *sips martini*)
We have just renewed our ASE Alumni pages, and alumni and ‘friends of ASE’ are invited to register here to access the Final Tea slideshows, annual Alumni Newsletters, and more.