Open Admissions: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Free College

by Danica Savonick

Overview

In Open Admissions Danica Savonick traces the largely untold story of the teaching experience of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich at the City University of New York (cuny) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This period, during which cuny guaranteed tuition-free admission to every city high school graduate, was one of the most controversial in US educational history. Analyzing their archival teaching materials—syllabi, lesson plans, and assignments—alongside their published work, Savonick reveals how these renowned writers were also transformative educators who developed creative methods of teaching their students to navigate and change the world. In fact, many of their methods—such as student-led courses, collaborative public projects, and the publication of student writing—anticipated the kinds of student-centered and antiracist pedagogies that have become popular in recent years. In addition to recovering the pedagogical legacy of these writers, Savonick shows how teaching in cuny’s free and open classrooms fundamentally altered their writing and, with it, the course of American literature and feminist criticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478059639
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	07/05/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	671 KB

About the Author

Danica Savonick is Assistant Professor of English at the State University of New York at Cortland.

Table of Contents

Preface: As Free as Air and Water  ix
Acknowledgments  xiii
Introduction: The Winds of Possibility  1
1. Toni Cade Bambara’s Community Controlled and Multimodal Pedagogy  19
2. “This Class . . . Has Much to Teach America”: June Jordan's Public and Project-Based Pedagogy  60
3. Of Parallels and Intersections: Adrienne Rich’s Pedagogy of Location  99
4. Sharing the Illumination: Audre Lorde’s Pedagogies of Difference  139
Conclusion: An Education Worth Fighting For  177
Notes  183
Bibliography  215
Index  239

Editorial Reviews

Danica Savonick outlines how the open admissions period at City University of New York made an important impact on university education and provided a crucial template for the next moves in educational liberation. She models how to reactivate Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich as our teachers in a moment where an in-depth understanding of their pedagogical choices can impact how we teach today.”—Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

“Danica Savonick traces the history of how the SEEK program at the City University of New York brought together a set of activist-teacher-poets whose intersecting careers were decisively shaped by the experience of teaching writing courses to working-class students of color during an era of open admissions and student revolt. The fascinating story Savonick tells reanimates how these teachers developed their core pedagogical principles during an extraordinarily utopian, generative, and successful moment in higher education. Open Admissions makes a significant contribution to scholarship and public conversations about higher education and the cost of college today.”—Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan, authors of, Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study

"Open Admissions will inspire writing teachers to engage students, connecting to the material conditions of their lives. Activists will find ideas for increasing student empowerment in programs for underserved populations, and educational leaders will gain inspiration from the groundbreaking 1965 SEEK college preparatory program and the resulting free college/open admissions CUNY policy. . . . Highly recommended."—J. C. Rossi, Choice

"Open Admissions doesn’t just establish precedent for the contestation of racial supremacy and colonialism in and around the classrooms where Bambara, Jordan, Rich, and Lorde taught. The book demonstrates that, though decades of austerity, debt, and corporatization eroded it, and demagogues now seek to destroy it, belief in the common good constitutes the recalcitrant infrastructure of institutions like City College. The dream of the open admissions era lives on in the constant reshaping of the democratic values that first motivated it."—Cole Adams, Critical Inquiry

From the Publisher

"Open Admissions will inspire writing teachers to engage students, connecting to the material conditions of their lives. Activists will find ideas for increasing student empowerment in programs for underserved populations, and educational leaders will gain inspiration from the groundbreaking 1965 SEEK college preparatory program and the resulting free college/open admissions CUNY policy. . . . Highly recommended."

Choice - J. C. Rossi

Danica Savonick traces the history of how the SEEK program at the City University of New York brought together a set of activist-teacher-poets whose intersecting careers were decisively shaped by the experience of teaching writing courses to working-class students of color during an era of open admissions and student revolt. The fascinating story Savonick tells reanimates how these teachers developed their core pedagogical principles during an extraordinarily utopian, generative, and successful moment in higher education. Open Admissions makes a significant contribution to scholarship and public conversations about higher education and the cost of college today.

Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study - Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan

Danica Savonick outlines how the open admissions period at City University of New York made an important impact on university education and provided a crucial template for the next moves in educational liberation. She models how to reactivate Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich as our teachers in a moment where an in-depth understanding of their pedagogical choices can impact how we teach today.

Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde - Alexis Pauline Gumbs