Editor's Column—Education Populism

PMLA, Vol. 132, No. 5, October 2017 Wai Chee Dimock 132. 5 ]

Editor’s Column Education Populism

HE SNOW HAD NOT BEEN PREDICTED, BUT IT WAS COMING DOWN Tin earnest, blanketing Philadelphia and catching even the cabs off guard. The Kelly Writers House was open that Saturday morning in January 2017, as it always is, seven days a week, appar- ently independent of the weather. And for good reason: someone else was already in the kitchen with a book and a mug of cofee, settled in and only briefy distracted when Julia Bloch, director of creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, ushered me into the house.1 “One of our regulars,” Julia said. “A student from Temple.” Te interview could have ended then and there—one minute into it and I had already gotten ample evidence of what sort of company the house kept. But here I was, armed with a long list of ques- tions, and I thought I should at least ask one. “I’m interested in three things: PennSound, ModPo, and the Kelly Writers House.2 Which is the most fundamental?” “Kelly Writers House, without a doubt. It came frst historically, and it still comes frst in every sense. All the high- tech stuf we’re doing now follows as a result.” Te Kelly Writers House is an actual house, a white and green Tudor- style cottage built in 1851 by the Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan. One of the few such cottages still in existence (fg. 1), it sits at the heart of Penn’s campus, on Locust Walk, a key counterpoint to the imposing tower of the Wharton School, a mere stone’s throw away. Te university chaplain used to live here. In 1995, when digiti- zation was just beginning to take hold, a group of students and faculty members, with zero dollars in funding, opened the house as a “pilot program of the Provost’s 21st-Century Initiative” (“About the Kelly Writers House”). Te program’s mission statement emphasizes that “[i] n addition to being a conventional location for an exchange of

ideas, it will also be an unconventional space outreach initiatives such as the Kelly Writers where virtual realities, electronic texts, and House Fellows program and its Young and electronic publishing will have a presence” Emerging Writers Fund. Among these do- (Walker). Tat double infrastructure—digital nors, 75% give less than $250 (Filreis). and physical—would maximize access “within Thanks to these loyal supporters, the Penn and beyond,” opening it to “community Kelly Writers House is now equipped with service groups and their sister schools, Phila- digital- video cameras, wall- mounted HDTVs, delphia book stores and libraries.” and a state- of- the- art recording studio, And that is indeed how things have matching the needs of its cutting- edge pro- worked out. Te house is now open to anyone grams: a sound archive, a massive open on- and everyone. It belongs to no single depart- line course (or MOOC), and a Web forum ment: classes in creative writing, critical writ- featuring poetry analysis, news, and inter- ing, Africana studies, and cinema studies all views.3 Still, the physical house looks old. Its regularly meet there. Te house is also a por- nineteenth- century crown molding, cuspi- tal, an entry point to Penn, for an even more date windows, and original oak floors are diverse public: students from Temple and still intact, going hand in hand with the worn Drexel Universities; grade- school kids, such leather couches and well- used kitchen and as those from Lea Elementary School partici- dining room. Te logo for Robinson Press, the pating in Write On! (writeonpenn .org); and house’s on-site printing press, is three mis- folks anywhere in the world holding down matched chairs (fig. 2), a fitting emblem for day jobs and eager to spend their spare time the house as a whole, highlighting writing as a doing something else online. Typically, half social art nourished by company and conver- of the in- person audiences are unconnected sations, putting hand- me- down furniture to to the university (Filreis). good use. Te chairs depicted in the logo are Te donors who support the Kelly Writ- in the Arts Café, the front parlor where poetry ers House are just as diverse. Receiving only readings and symposiums are hosted. Humble a fraction of its income from the provost’s of- but unmistakable signs of welcome, they of- fce, the house gets 81% of its funding from fer everyone there a literal seat at the table, a loyal supporters with personal commitments comfortable perch as they listen and talk and to this endeavor, giving it the means to launch enjoy the food made on the premises (fg. 3). Part of the house’s infrastructure, cooking and eating are as reli- able as the house’s high- tech experiments are risky. It is no accident that the main meet- ing room here is called the Arts Café or that its best- known student FIG.  publication is Penn Appétit, the nation’s Entrance to the Kelly Writers oldest college food House. Photograph magazine ( pennappetit by the Kelly Writers .com/). Now published House staff. in print only once a se- 132. 5 ] Editor’s Column 1091 mester, it fourishes as an online blog, featur- FIG.  ing entries by students from the professional Program for a read- schools as well as by undergraduates. Two of ing at the Kelly Writ- the most memorable posts are by students ers House containing from the Wharton School: “Cheese and Rice the logo for its press. around the World,” by Justin Yue, and “Mar- cus Samuelsson Brings Soul Back to Food,” by Chase Matecun. Yue shows how to make Mas- simo Bottura’s risotto cacio e pepe while fll- ing us in on the recipe’s origins: “Back in May of 2012, there was an earthquake in Northern Italy, which afected hundreds of individuals and also destroyed thousands of Parmigiano Reggiano (Parmesan) cheese cylinders . . ., so chef Massimo Bottura led a movement to get chefs around the world to buy these damaged cheese cylinders.” Te risotto was part of that cheese-salvaging campaign. Chefs are among the heroes at the Kelly Writers House. Mate- cun, managing editor of Penn Appétit, profles another one: Marcus Samuelsson, the owner and chef of the Red Rooster, a restaurant in Harlem. Noting that the menu combines “the soul food of the American South, Afro- Caribbean traditions, and even Asian favors that refect Harlem’s steadfast Asian popula- tion,” Matecun adds that the restaurant’s staf is just as eclectic, and he ends with what Sam- uelsson seems proudest of—that his restaurant has “the best Puerto Rican–Filipino staf meals ever” (“Marcus Samuelsson”). Tis is not exactly the sort of writing one would expect from the Wharton School. Who are Yue and Matecun, and how typical are they of the institution that produced Don- ald Trump and Ivanka Trump? In addition FIG.  to being a risotto con- Students sharing noisseur, Yue speaks food prepared at Mandarin Chinese and the Kelly Writers Cantonese. Matecun, House. Photograph who just graduated, is by the Kelly Writers the incoming rotational House staff. 1092 Editor’s Column [ PMLA

product manager at Zynga, a video- game New York Times have all reported on (Blanc et company, but he continues to feature the Kelly al.; Andrews; Feuer). Matecun, writing about Writers House prominently on his personal Samuelsson, found out that there was such a blog, “Te Foreign Fork.” “To me food is more thing as Puerto Rican–Filipino cuisine. And than just nourishment—it’s an experience that I, writing about the Kelly Writers House, have should be shared with others and appreciated had my eyes opened in more ways than one. both culturally and historically,” he writes. Here, then, is an education populism, the He vows to “bring this understanding back to opposite of the know- nothing version ascen- the United States” and to collect “traditional dant in the United States and Europe. Start- recipes from paellas to montaditos, interview ing out at an elite university but not bound local chefs and food producers, and sample by it, this other populism proceeds not by and document the full spectrum of traditional building walls and banning out- groups but Mediterranean foods.” He concludes with yet by insisting that no walls are necessary, that another tribute to his benefactor: “How is this everyone is “in.” If the Kelly Writers House blog made possible? If it weren’t for the gen- is right, writing is not so much a talent as a erosity of the Kelly Writers House, I would be universal entitlement: everyone can do it, and living of of baguettes and slices of second rate everyone will beneft from it. Even those at jamón each day. Tanks, guys!” (“About ”). diferent ends of the political spectrum could Yue and Matecun are not what we would come together on this basic level, this lowest, ordinarily call writers, nor would their blog least divisive, and most enlightening com- posts stand out amid the dizzying array of mon denominator. Is such a populism pos- texts originating from the Kelly Writers House. sible outside creative writing? Is it possible But that is the point, the guiding principle of outside Penn? How viable or legible are its this unabashedly crowdsourced enterprise. claims at public universities and community Writing here is meant to be unremarkable, a colleges? What are its pitfalls, its limits? daily routine for hundreds and thousands of To my mind, the populism of the Kelly people, fully occupied in other ways but some- Writers House is tested by one of its own pro- how fnding time to put words on the screen, grams: PennSound, perhaps the best known doing it voluntarily, a little at a time, and with and best loved among its offerings, though palpable satisfaction. What is showcased here probably not its most egalitarian. Funded is not the monopoly of established writers but by private donors and codirected by Charles a free- for- all open to anyone willing to give Bernstein and Al Filreis, the faculty direc- writing a try, justifed only by the pleasure and tor of the house, PennSound was launched instruction it afords the authors. on 1 January 2005 as the “iTunes of poetry,” Writing of this sort democratizes educa- with technical support from the Annenberg tion, makes it broad- based and self- directed Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and and therefore the heart and soul of a univer- the computing department of Penn’s School sity. Te Kelly Writers House is one of the few of Arts and Sciences (Matheson). Te largest places on campus where “engineers, econo- online archive of poets reading from their mists, and literary critics share a common own works, PennSound contains, at the time identity through writing” (Walker), emerging of this writing, sixty thousand individual re- as colearners and coproducers of knowledge. cordings, adding up to six thousand hours Yue, writing about Buttaro’s risotto recipe, of listening. Some of these recordings are of learned frsthand about chef activism, an im- readings that took place at the Kelly Writers portant part of the contemporary food move- House, some were donated directly by the ment that Oxfam, the Sierra Club, and The poets, and others came from sister organiza- 132. 5 ] Editor’s Column 1093 tions such as the Library of Congress; Ubu- its criteria for selection, infected by its long- Web; the Electronic Poetry Center, at Bufalo standing ties to conceptual poetry; but those University; Washington University’s Poetry criteria are easily inferable and not univer- Archive; and the Woodberry Poetry Room, at sally agreed on. Tey can certainly be gleaned Harvard University. from the course description for ModPo, a me- Designed to be broadly accessible, ticulously planned and decidedly nonneutral PennSound states in its manifesto that all re- way to teach poetry, “with an emphasis on ex- cordings must be “free and downloadable”; perimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and that all “must be of MP3 or better quality”; Walt Whitman to the present” (“Modern and that they must be “broken down into singles,” Contemporary American Poetry”). to be listened to individually or incorporated Experimental: this is the operative word— into course syllabi; that they “must be named”; recursively operative, it seems, at every level that “bibliographic information must be em- of the Kelly Writers House’s infrastructures: bedded into each individual sound fle”; and physical, digital, and philosophical. Having that each “must be indexed and retrievable itself ventured into uncharted territory, the from a library catalog under the poet’s name house looks for the same risk- taking spirit in and from search engines on the web” (Bern- the poets it showcases. Its platforms are ca- stein). These user- friendly measures have pacious, but there is no question that some more than paid of. Since its inception in 2005, gatekeeping is going on. The time, money, PennSound has maintained a track record of and technical expertise required to produce three million downloads per year (Matheson). PennSound’s MP3 fles guarantee that its au- Historic readings by Robert Frost, Ezra thors list, however long, has limits. And, in Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos any case, a sound archive preserving readings Williams are here; so too are readings by con- by poets is by defnition curated. It is an honor temporary poets such as Jorie Graham and to be admitted to this company; not everyone Claudia Rankine. But the site is by no means would be, not least because not every writer limited to these stellar fgures. In fact, the big could be called a poet. How to reconcile the names tend to get lost among the multitude of poetry selected by PennSound with the writ- poets represented, including a sizable number ing universalized by the Kelly Writers House? from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe—Du- Oddly, it is ModPo, the most contro- bravka Djurić, Alexei Parshchikov, and Grze- versial among the Kelly Writers House’s gorz Wróblewski, to name a few—obscure to experiments, that offers a reconciliation of all but the most avid readers of contemporary sorts, bracketing these seemingly antitheti- poetry. Te site is also committed to sponsor- cal positions by putting poetry itself on the ing poetry festivals and reading series open line, hard-pressed by the economics of a tech- to newcomers, from the Festival of Contem- driven media ecology. ModPo, a MOOC with porary Japanese Women Poets to Bernstein’s a cumulative enrollment of 180,000, runs for Close Listening. ten weeks from September to November but Still, there are puzzling omissions. How can be joined any time of the year through to account for the presence of Amiri Baraka Coursera, one of the “big three” MOOC pro- but not Rita Dove, Lyn Hejinian but not viders.4 Its presence on that platform has been Robert Hass, Samuel Delany but not Derek a cause of alarm for many, raising deep con- Walcott? Te list of poets many of us would cerns about exacerbated inequalities and the miss on this site is probably as long as the rapidly encroaching presence of the market. list of poets we would be pleased to find. Cofounded by the Stanford professors PennSound is not particularly vocal about Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, Coursera 1094 Editor’s Column [ PMLA

was launched in 2012 with “fnancial backing mean something, even to Coursera. Filreis from two of Silicon Valley’s premier venture has been teaching a version of this course capital frms” (Markof). A for- proft company since 1985. Its digital platform has thrown it from the get-go (like its rival Udacity and un- into a volatile world, but otherwise ModPo like its other rival, edX, launched by Harvard has remained the same, philosophically, and MIT the same year [“Big Tree”]), Cours- pedagogically, even physically. Like every- era was able to monetize its course oferings thing else from the Kelly Writers House, it within one year of its launch, reporting in is nonproft, does not generate revenue, and September 2013 that it had generated one mil- is entirely free. Rejecting the typical Cours- lion dollars in revenue from the sale of certif- era video- lecture format, it sticks to seminar cates verifying successful course completion discussions, live streamed through webcasts, (Empson and Ferenstein). Since then, it has and invites enrolled students to participate grown to be the largest MOOC provider, now by phone or through Twitter or Facebook Live with 26 million registered users, more than (“Modern and Contemporary American Po- 2,000 courses, and over $210 million in ven- etry”). While ModPo does ofer a certifcate, ture capital (Stangel). It has made good on its this is awarded not for the fee paid but solely for- profit promise, multiplying its revenue on the basis of completed course work—in streams almost on a monthly basis, making this case, an extraordinary amount of writ- the for- fee model the norm while expanding ing: at least one online comment per week rapidly into new market niches. posted to the discussion forums, four papers, In June 2016 Coursera scored a decisive and four peer reviews of work done by oth- victory over edX, partnering with the State ers in the class, all read and graded by a team Department to create Coursera for Refugees of dedicated teaching assistants, available for (“U.S. State Department”).5 In August 2016 consultation through online ofce hours. the company launched Coursera for Busi- These writing assignments, along with ness (“Coursera”), a bid to take over the cor- a syllabus that might look unfamiliar even porate e-learning market, estimated to be to seasoned teachers of American literature, “worth $12 billion in the US alone” (Sawers). help explain why this course is a key part of In October 2016 Coursera began a systematic the Kelly Writers House—a lab where its as- shift to monthly subscription plans, a still pirations are tested against the demands of more efective way to generate revenue than venture capital, giving its populist conception its fee- per- course model. In January 2017 it of writing a chance to prove itself. A course rolled out yet another product, Coursera for on modern and contemporary American po- Governments, partnering with seven Asian etry that opens with Whitman and Dick in son and African countries—India, Pakistan, Sin- might raise eyebrows, but the reading assign- gapore, Malaysia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and ments for the second week (entitled Whit man- Mongolia—along with the United States. ians and Dickinsonians) make it clear why Given the size of Coursera and its scale these nineteenth- century poets are integral to of operations, a ten- week course taught every the contemporary story—a story of writing as year on modern and contemporary Ameri- a critical mass collectively engendered across can poetry might seem like nothing, utterly time, adding up to a nontrivial force equal to trivial in the larger scheme of things. And yet powerful but ephemeral forces. Whit man ians from another point of view it could not be and Dickinsonians features poems by fve po- more consequential. Against the minute- by- ets: two by William Carlos Williams, one by minute vicissitudes of the online education Allen Ginsberg, one by Rae Ar man trout, three market,6 the steadfastness of ModPo must by Lorine Niedecker, and one by Cid Corman. 132. 5 ] Editor’s Column 1095

Te less- well- known of these fve, Niedecker by ModPo, in the form of positive press. In and Corman, are the animating core here. 2013 an article in The Chronicle of Higher Students are asked to post online comments Education commended Filreis for being will- on Niedecker’s “Grandfather advised me” and ing to “dig in the muck” and for making his Corman’s “It isn’t for want” and to write their “MOOC an ‘outreach for poetry’” (Kolowich). frst paper using this material. An article in PC Magazine in 2015 hailed “Grandfather advised me,” as fercely ex- ModPo’s seminar format as “a laboratory perimental as any poem by Dickinson, and “It for 21st century experimentation in online isn’t for want,” as much an efect of the frst- education” (Fenton). It was not the typical person pronoun as any poem by Whitman, Coursera MOOC but a distinct outlier that demonstrate what poetry looks like when got everyone’s attention, fring people up to imagined as a crowdsourced sequel. This do some writing of their own. Writing of this body of material becomes a force not on the sort was legible to all in the business. In 2016 strength of prosody but through something Filreis received a Transformation Award, one far less specialized, something like genera- of Coursera’s inaugural Outstanding Educa- tive power, measured by the inspired output tor Awards, for “having contributed the most by others, those driven to get in on the act. to the platform’s vision of enabling anyone, Any poetry worth its name has to produce anywhere to transform their life through its a living sequel of this sort, an outpouring of massive open online courses” (Leong). words ongoing and multitudinous. If writ- Could an experimental humanities four- ing is a universal entitlement, poetry is what ish at a major research university, meet a tech feeds it, amplifes it, and makes it perennial. company on its own turf, and come away un- Only on this basis can this seemingly rarefed scathed? The answer so far is a resounding body of writing make sense in the radically yes. It is up to the rest of us to run further egalitarian world of the Kelly Writers House: feld tests, producing variants at our own in- far from being a privilege of the few, poetry stitutions as tenacious and vital as this fear- here is another name for the populism that less prototype. animates it, making its case, over and over Wai Chee Dimock again, that writing is durable precisely because it is for anyone and everyone, creating a literate public with no fuss and little cost. From the standpoint of this populism—and against the technocracy of Silicon Valley and NOTES the know- nothingism of the right—there is no contradiction between the selective pres- 1. Al Filreis, the house’s faculty director, was in Flor- ida caring for his eighty-seven- year- old mother and could ervation of poetry by PennSound and the not join us. nonselective nurturing of writing in the Kelly 2. PennSound is a digital sound archive of poets read- Writers House. Te short- term goals of these ing their own poetry; ModPo is an online course on mod- two are diferent, but over the long haul they ern and contemporary American poetry. 3. Convinced that media production is an integral converge, producing outpourings of words part of writing, Filreis raised one million dollars in that can be counted on to extend indefnitely. 2014 to build the Wexler Studio, a key component of the It is a defnition of poetry that Coursera house’s pedagogical infrastructure. Since the completion might have respected, if anyone there had of the studio in 2014, podcasts and webcasts from the Kelly Writers House have doubled in number, making bothered to read the poems. I am sure no digital distribution an option for all programs sponsored one did. What Coursera probably did notice by the house and all classes being held there. was the outpourings of words occasioned 4. Te “big three” are Coursera, Udacity, and edX. 1096 Editor’s Column [ PMLA

5. Even though edX had started offering online Kolowich, Steve. “Making His MOOC an ‘Outreach of courses for refugees in February 2013, it was Coursera Poetry.’” Te Chronicle of Higher Education, 29 Apr. that won the contract with the State Department in June 2013, www .chronicle .com/ article/ Making -His of that year (“U.S. State Department”). -MOOC-an - Outreach/138783. 6. Two months afer Richard Levin was replaced as Leong, Jeanne. “Penn’s Al Filreis Wins a Coursera Out- CEO of Coursera, Koller announced that she was taking standing Educator Award.” Penn News, University a new job as chief computing ofcer at Calico, a Google- of Pennsylvania, 31 Mar. 2016, news .upenn .edu/ funded company (McNeal). news/ penn-s- al- filreis- wins -coursera -outstanding - educator - award. Markof, John. “Online Education Venture Lures Cash WORKS C ITED Infusion and Deals with Five Top Universities.” Te New York Times, 18 Apr. 2012, www .nytimes .com/ “About the Kelly Writers House.” The Kelly Writers 2012/ 04/18/technology/ coursera- plans- to- announce House, University of Pennsylvania, writing .upenn - university -partners- for- online- classes .html. .edu/wh/about/. Matecun, Chase. “About.” Te Foreign Fork, foreignfork “About Wharton.” The Wharton School, 2017, www .wordpress.com/ about/. . wharton .upenn .edu/ about- wharton/. ———. “Marcus Samuelsson Brings Soul Back to Food.” Andrews, Avital. “Nine Chefs Who Are Changing the Penn Appétit, 19 Feb. 2017, pennappetit .com/ marcus World.” Sierra, Sierra Club, 23 Feb. 2015, www -samuelsson-brings- soul- back- to- food/. . sierraclub .org/ sierra/2015- 2- march- april/ taste -test/ Matheson, Kathy. “University of Pennsylvania Archive Of- 9 -chefs -who- are- changing- world. fers Poetry for Download.” Center for Programs in Con- Bernstein, Charles. “PennSound Manifesto.” PennSound, temporary Writing, University of Pennsylvania, 8 May University of Pennsylvania, 2003, writing.upenn .edu/ 2007, writing .upenn .edu/ news/ap_pennsound .html. pennsound/manifesto .php. McNeal, Marguerite. “Daphne Koller Bids Farewell to “Te Big Tree, at a Glance.” Te New York Times, 2 Nov. Coursera, Hello to Calico.” EdSurge, 18 Aug. 2016, 2012, www .nytimes .com/2012/11/04/education/ www .edsurge .com/ news/2016-08- 18- daphne- koller edlife/ the- big- three- mooc- providers .html. -bids - farewell -to -coursera- hello- to- calico. Blanc, Raymond, et al. “Food and Climate Justice: Open “Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (“Mod- Letter from Chefs, Activists, Musicians.” Oxfam In- P o ” ) . ” Te Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsyl- ternational, 2017, www .oxfam .org/en/campaigns/ vania, writing.upenn .edu/ wh/modpo/. food -and - climate - justice- open- letter- chefs- activists Sawers, Paul. “Coursera for Business Launches to Tap -musicians. the Billion- Dollar Corporate E-Learning Market.” “Coursera Launches Coursera for Business, an Enter- Venture Beat, 7 Sept. 2017, venturebeat.com/2017/09/07/ prise Platform for Workforce Development at Scale.” amazon-is - building -a -5 - billion- secondary- u- s- hq -and Marketwired, 31 Aug. 2016, www .marketwired .com/ -wants- local- governments- to- submit- proposals/. press - release/ coursera- launches- coursera- business Stangel, Luke. “Coursera Hires CEO Who Helped His - enterprise - platform-workforce- development -scale Last Company Go Public.” Silicon Valley Business - 2154565.htm. Journal, 14 June 2017, www .bizjournals .com/sanjose/ Empson, Rip, and Gregory Ferenstein. “Free Massive On- news/ 2017/ 06/ 14/coursera-ceo- jeff- maggioncalda line Education Provider, Coursera, Begins to Find a - fnancial- engines .html. Path to Profts.” TechCrunch, 12 Sept. 2013, techcrunch “The U.S. State Department and Coursera Offer Free .com/ 2013/09/12/free-massive -online -education Online Courses to Refugees.” EdSurge, 20 June 2016, - provider - coursera-begins- to-f nd- a- path- to- profts/. www . edsurge.com/news/2016-06-20-the-u-s-state Fenton, William. “ModPo: Long Live the Online Semi- - department-and -coursera-ofer-free-online-courses nar.” PC, 3 Dec. 2015, www .pcmag .com/ article2/ -to- refugees. 0,2817,2496059,00.asp. Walker, Shawn Lynn. “Mission Statement.” The Kelly Feuer, Alan. “Tom Colicchio, Citizen Chef.” The New Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, writing York Times, 16 May 2014, www .nytimes .com/ 2014/ .upenn.edu/wh/about/ mission .php. 05/ 18/ nyregion/ tom- colicchio- citizen- chef .html. Yue, Justin. “Cheese and Rice around the World.” Penn Filreis, Al. E-mail message. Received by Wai Chee Di- Appétit, 19 Mar. 2017, pennappetit .com/ cheese- rice mock, 21 Aug. 2017. - around -the -world/.