THE POWER AND POETICS OF PUBLIC PEDAGOGY

Location

This week we’ll meet at the CUNY Graduate Center, at 365 5th Avenue, between 34th and 35th Street. More instructions forthcoming. 

Agenda

We have a few nested purposes today: to contemplate the history of CUNY itself as a once-free and still-relatively-accessible-but-ever-less-so public university, and to consider the types of public study that inclusivity (ideally) makes possible; second, to engage with Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, which centers the “interplay of poetry, poetics, friendship, and politics” through collaborative archival research and experimental publishing; and third, to focus specifically on Lost & Found’s “CUNY Pedagogy” series, which engages with Toni Cade Bambara’s, June Jordan’s, Audre Lorde’s, and Adrienne Rich’s radical pedagogy and commitments to public study on CUNY campuses. 

We’ll meet with Ammiel Alcalay, poet, Professor of Comparative Literature and initiator of Lost & Found; Stephon Lawrence, writer and artist; Sampson Starkweather, poet, small press editor, and Director of Communications for CUNY’s Center for Humanities; and Kendra Sullivan, poet, artist, and director of the Center for Humanities. Matt Gold, Associate Professor of English and director of various digital initiatives, also encourages us to stop by the Data Visualization program lounge, in room 5307, to check out Paula Fleischer’s ““Dónde Están: Searching for Desaparecidos of the Argentine Dirty War” data visualization quilt. 

To Prepare for This Week:

• Please explore the CUNY Digital History Archive and read Stephen Brier’s overview: “Why the History of CUNY Matters: Using the CUNY Digital History Archive to Teach CUNY’s Past,” Radical Teacher 108 (Spring 2017)..
  • The METRO NY Library Council often awards digitization grants to CUNY campus libraries and archives; these glimpses into the system’s collections exemplify how CUNY’s institutional history crystallizes its campus neighborhoods’ own political history. Check out the 2026 grants here. 
• CUNY’s SEEK program unites many of the figures we’ll be discussing today, so I ask that you please read this short piece by Danica Savonic for some helpful context: “Literary Studies in Marginalized Spaces: The City College SEEK Program,” Aydelotte Foundation (February 22, 2022). 
• Now, I invite you to introduce yourself to our hosts for today, the CUNY Grad Center’s Center for the Humanities, and its Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. 
• Let’s focus on Lost & Found’s “CUNY Pedagogy Series.” This series exists as a set of lovely chapbooks (which I’ll bring to class if I can find my copies in storage, and which our hosts can surely share!), but it’s also freely available online via the Manifold digital publishing platform; you’ll find links to each volume here. You’re welcome to skim any or all, and to engage more closely with those segments that pique your interest, but the following sections seem most directly relevant to our study of public study:
  • * Toni Cade Bambara, “Realizing the Dream of a Black University” in Realizing the Dream of a Black University & Other Writings, Part II, edited by Makeba Lavan & Conor Tomás Reed (Lost & Found, 2017). 
  • * June Jordan, “The City and the City College: An Off-Campus, Off-Camera Perspective” and “Statement at CUNY Board of Higher Education Tuition Hearing [May 5, 1976]” in Life Studies, 1966-1976, edited by Conor Tomás Reed and Talia Shalev (Lost & Found, 2017). 
  • * Adrienne Rich, “Notes, Statements & Memos on Seek, Basic Writing & the Interdisciplinary Program” in Teaching at CUNY, 1968-1974, Part I, edited by Iemanjá Brown, Stefania Heim, erica kaufman, Kristin Moriah, Conor Tomás Reed, Talia Shalev, Wendy Tronrud, and Ammiel Alcalay (Lost & Found, 2013). 
  • * Adrienne Rich, “Teaching Materials: Book Lists, Syllabi, Notes & Assignments” in Teaching at CUNY, 1968-1974, Part II, edited by Iemanjá Brown, Stefania Heim, erica kaufman, Kristin Moriah, Conor Tomás Reed, Talia Shalev, Wendy Tronrud, and Ammiel Alcalay (Lost & Found, 2013). 
  • Audre Lorde, “Syllabi, Teaching Journals, Notes, and Course Proposals From John Jay College of Criminal Justice” and “Syllabi, Outlines, and Teaching Notes From Hunter College” in “I Teach Myself in Outline”: Notes, Journals, Syllabi, edited by Miriam Atkin and Iemanjá Brown (Lost & Found, 2017). 
  • Makeba Lavan & Conor Tomás Reed, Introduction to Toni Cade Bambara, Realizing the Dream of a Black University & Other Writings, Part I, edited by Makeba Lavan & Conor Tomás Reed (Lost & Found, 2017). 
• Let’s acknowledge, too, progressive pedagogy and experimental programs within or adjacent to other institutions of higher learning. See the Interference Archive’s 2018-19 “Free Education! The Free University of New York, Alternate U, and Learning Liberation” exhibition (thanks, Laura!). The following merit a shout-out for now, and a closer read when time allows!: Eli Meyerhoff’s Beyond Education: Radical Studying for Another World (University of Minnesota Press, 2019); and Reid Pitney Higginson’s “When Experimentation Was Mainstream,” History of Education Quarterly 59:2 (2019): 195-226. 
• Finally, if you have time: to remind ourselves of the polysemic nature and prismatic politics of free education, read Irit Rogott, “Free,” e-flux education (originally published March 2010).