A few months ago, I saw this poster on the New York subway, part of an art initiative which I generally embrace: The poem “A Name” was written by Ada Limón, a Californian poet whose work is featured in feminist collections and conferences. This is the text: A Name When Eve walked among the animals…
Public schools: the starting point for questions, for possibility, for the anti-dictate
I am a field mentor for student teachers getting their masters degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at New York University. I myself am not a public school teacher, and for this reason, I love coming to schools and working with student teachers and their mentoring cooperating teachers over the course…
More love, less labor: adjuncts and the hierarchy of labor in higher education
Teaching is, for those of us who are lucky to have figured this out, a joyful and deeply rewarding profession. I’ve been teaching for over 12 years, and have worked with adults from 18 to over 70. I have taught classes on English as a Second Language (ESL), professional communication skills, computer literacy, citizenship, bilingual…
Is a conversation action?: bell hooks and theory for healing and liberation
A politically conscious and active friend of mine teaches in an early college program in Queens, where teenagers learn from him about U.S. history and great literature. This weekend, we chatted a bit about his work, how wonderful and inspiring it can be, as well as how uncertain in terms of greater consequences. My friend…
Crisis → recovery → crisis → recovery, etc…and the alternative: Bakhtin’s/Tina Turner’s co-authored future
19 minutes ago, my phone lit up with a headline from the New York Times: Top Stories: President Trump’s reckless threats could set the nation “on the path to World War III,” said Senator Bob Corker, an influential Republican Headlines like this feel relatively common, a reminder that crisis upon crisis has become the status…
“If we can think, feel, and move, we can dance”: Anna Halprin’s radical pedagogy
At Hunter College last week, I saw an installation which accompanied a dance performance taking place this fall on campus entitled Radical Bodies, which features the work of choreographer Anna Talprin. Halprin, whose experimental workshops took place on a beautiful outdoor stage, did work that “rejected the high style and codified technique of reigning modern-dance…
Educators as political participants, sanctuary as co-authored activity toward radical hope: Politico article about CUNY professors and our syllabi
On Wednesday, Politico published an article about the opening statement I and other professors use on their syllabi at City College, Hunter College, and other CUNY campuses in New York. The statement, which I adopted in January 2017 and have included for all of my classes since, reads: As an educator, I fully support the…
We ready, we comin’: the end of DACA and getting started
Hi Diana, I feel you, I know it’s scary… Tonight I took part in a phone call last night held by United We Dream, a national organization fighting for social justice run by and for immigrant youth. Apparently over 2,000 people from all over the country including Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Oregon…
The question of community: climate change, DACA, and environmental racism
Hurricane Harvey is striking Houston and 50 other counties in Texas, pounding the region with enough water to fill the football stadiums of the NFL and all colleges across the country 100 times. Nearly impossible to imagine. At the same time, one-third of Bangladesh is under water in a monsoon season that has been strongly…
Abstract art and the proceduralization of physicality
While the title of this post is ambiguous at best and horribly abstruse at worst (by the way, linguist’s nerdy moment: the word “abstruse,” which means “difficult to understand, obscure,” is in itself abstruse), I think it’s the best way to describe a piece of installation art by Jeff Kasper in an exhibit I saw at…
