City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2018 Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Open Admissions Danica B. Savonick The Graduate Center, CUNY How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2604 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] INSURGENT KNOWLEDGE: THE POETICS AND PEDAGOGY OF TONI CADE BAMBARA, JUNE JORDAN, AUDRE LORDE, AND ADRIENNE RICH IN THE ERA OF OPEN ADMISSIONS by DANICA SAVONICK A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 DANICA SAVONICK All Rights Reserved ii Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Open Admissions by Danica Savonick This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in English in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________ ___________________________________ Date Kandice Chuh Chair of Examining Committee _______________________ ___________________________________ Date Eric Lott Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Cathy N. Davidson Michelle Fine Eric Lott Robert Reid-Pharr THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Open Admissions by Danica Savonick Advisor: Dr. Kandice Chuh Insurgent Knowledge analyzes the reciprocal relations between teaching and literature in the work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom taught in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) educational opportunity program at the City University of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on archival research and analysis of their published work, I show how feminist aesthetics have shaped U.S. education (especially student-centered pedagogical practices) and how classroom encounters with students had a lasting impact on our postwar literary landscape and theories of difference. My project demonstrates how, for these teacher-poets, creative work and teaching were interrelated efforts to galvanize students, readers, and audiences in the production of a more just, equitable, and pleasurable world. In doing so, I illuminate the centrality of aesthetic education to processes of social change: how encounters with art and artmaking (poiesis) can help us interrogate common sense, unlearn dominant pedagogies, retrain our viscera, and think beyond the status quo. The materials analyzed in this project include unpublished archival teaching materials— syllabi, lesson plans, assignments, lecture notes—housed at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe and Spelman College and published literature and essays from the period 1965-2002. Through close examination of these texts, I show how these teacher-poets developed pedagogies of social justice deeply influenced by their experiences teaching in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with iv particular attentiveness to the longstanding influence of educational opportunity programs and Open Admissions in their work. These materials and questions necessitated an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the methods of women of color feminism, urban education studies, critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and literary analysis. Building upon recent research in critical university studies, this project constructs a genealogy of feminist poet-teachers as leaders of pedagogical, institutional, and social change. Each chapter analyzes the pedagogies that emerge from one author’s literary and educational texts. I show how aesthetic education can contribute to ongoing struggles for social justice and material redistribution: by denaturalizing common sense and altering our social consciousness; through place-based local research assignments that help students locate their seemingly idiosyncratic experiences in relation to collective histories and institutional structures; by challenging students to participate in the formal construction of their learning environments including the content, methods, and means by which their learning will be assessed; by teaching collaboration; and by having students write for audiences beyond the classroom (including publishing their work in anthologies). These pedagogies, I argue, demonstrate ways to navigate and contest the privatization of knowledge and power that has come to dominate educational practice. v For my mom and my grandma... One thousand dedications On one thousand dissertations Could not express My love. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost I must thank my Dream Team dissertation committee: Kandice Chuh, Cathy N. Davidson, Michelle Fine, Eric Lott, Robert Reid-Pharr, and honorary member Duncan Faherty. Every day I am more convinced that you are unearthly superbeings sojourning on this planet as an act of charity to the rest of us; to say that you are out of this world is surely an understatement. A special thank you to Cathy N. Davidson for your extraordinary support throughout this journey. I’ll admit that I am completely overwhelmed by the task of figuring out how to properly thank Kandice for everything she has done for me and for this project! Anyone who has been lucky enough to enter into her orbit will understand the impossibility of this task. How do you thank someone so generous and encouraging? Someone who creates vibrant lifeworlds of study that fill us with a sense of wonder and possibility? I never would have found my way to you all were it not for my undergraduate advisor, Richard Dienst, who taught me to love theory and theorizing—to use writing, photographs, videos, all the tools at our disposal, to think critically and creatively about the world. This project has benefited tremendously from the insights of Kandice’s dissertation group—how fortunate I am to have worked with Christopher Eng, Melissa Phruksachart, Frances Tran, Nick Gamso, Brianna Brickley, Lynne Beckenstein, Talia Shalev, Rebecca Fullan, LeiLani Dowell, Marcos Gonsalez, Jaime Shearn Coan, and Lou Cornum. There’s no one I would rather “be with” in this work: “Thank you for not minding me showing you my bald spot.” An additional thank you to Chris, whose patient mentoring I can only hope to honor by extending it forward, onward, and outwards. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Futures Initiative, which sustained my work not only materially but intellectually. Katina Rogers, Lisa Tagliaferri, Kalle Westerling, Lauren Melendez, Michael Dorsch, Kaysi Homan, Mike Rifino, Allison Guess, Jessica Murray, and Michelle Morales have taught me much about the pleasure of collaboration. Thank you to Steve Brier, Ken Wissoker, Jodi Melamed, Cindi Katz, and Elizabeth Maddock Dillon for taking time out of their incredibly busy schedules to talk me through this project at key moments. There are several others, mostly colleagues in the English Department, without whom none of this would be possible. Thank you to Roya Biggie and Elly Weybright for the daily laughter necessary to withstand the crisis ordinariness that is graduate school. I am so grateful that Alicia Andrzejewski, Molly Appel, Hilarie Ashton, Alexander Baldassano, Liz Goetz, Timothy Griffiths, Amanda Licastro, Kaitlin Mondello, and Stephen Spencer have accompanied me along this wild ride, making it all the wilder. vii This research was generously supported by a Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Archival Research Grant, three years of a Futures Initiative Fellowship, a Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies Fellowship, and a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. Thank you to Susan Billmaier, Matthew Goldfelder, and Nikhil Dharan for making this happen. I owe much to Holly Smith and Kassandra Ware at the Spelman Archives and the dedicated archivists at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. To my cat, Cole Savonick-Beanface, you will always be my Most Improved Teaching Assistant. Any typos are surely the fault of your panther paws prancing across the keyboard. To my friends — Nicole Barbuto, Selena Drobnick, Allie Howard, Michele McCaffrey, Marie Pace, Martin Ramos, Shaili Shah, Giselle Silvestrini, Annemarie Tiburzi, Arielle Urman, Sarah Verbil — you continually astonish me with the power of friendship, showing me ever new things that it’s capable of. To my Queens College students, who make learning thrilling, and have taught me more than I ever imagined it was possible to know...this project is shot through with your wisdom, your courage, your passion. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One 42 “aesthetics of the outsider”: Audre Lorde and the Praxis of Collaborative Worldmaking Chapter Two 92 Changing the Subject: Adrienne Rich and the Poetics of Feminist Pedagogy Chapter Three 143 “To write stories that save our lives”: Toni Cade Bambara and the Art of Polvocal Placemaking Chapter Four 193 “This class has something to teach America”: June Jordan and the Democratization of Poetry and Pedagogy Conclusion 238 Bibliography 245 ix INTRODUCTION Comparison-Contrast Topics to Explore in Preparation for Mid-Term Essay: Silence…