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.

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9781478026372

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“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 *

“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 *

Author Information

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

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