Politics and Social Change Commons^™

Navigating Cape Town: A Poetic Cartography, Sam Lin-Sommer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Cape Town has long been the site of conflicts over urban space. This study explored the potentials of a place-based poetry workshop as a tool for critically engaging with the urban environment. With the assistance of a well-established local poet, the researcher facilitated a poetry workshop that brought three young and emerging poets to contested public spaces including District Six, Company Gardens, and Church Square. After the workshop, poets submitted their writing to the researcher, who compiled and narrated a poem that showcased the voices of these poets while drawing attention to salient ideas evoked by the poets’ work. The …

The Poetry Of John Dewey, Jerry L. Williams

Faculty Publications

This essay examines the poetry of John Dewey, 101 poems in total. Characteristic of the rhymed and metered poetry of the period, they show a very human side of Dewey. This analysis argues that many of his poems deal with existential themes—love, finitude, and God, for example. On a deeper level these poems are also show connections to Dewey’s philosophy, in particular his ideas about social change and dualism.

Strange Fruit: Race, Terror, And The War On Terror, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This poem examines drone warfare as a form of lynching. “Strange Fruit” links the deaths of Pakistani children Zeerak and Maria Khan to the murders of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, documented in the most infamous lynching photograph in U.S. history.

Of All Days: Critical Pedagogy Outside The Classroom, Lisa M. Tillmann Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

A student at the author’s college pens a racist column on immigration for the school newspaper. Two departments, including the author’s, send campus-wide emails denouncing the rhetoric. A firestorm erupts, as much over the emails as over the op-ed. Years later, the student visits the author unannounced.

"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo

Master's Theses

Kate Chopin’s female protagonists have long since fascinated literary critics, raising serious questions concerning the influence of nineteenth-century female gender roles in her writing. Published in 1899, The Awakening demonstrates the changeability of the various representations of woman. In the nineteenth century, the subject of women may be divided into two categories: the True Woman and the New Woman. The former were expected to “cherish and maintain the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Khoshnood et al.), while the latter sought to move away from hearth and home in order to focus on education, professions, and political …

Too Many Rented Rooms: Creative Expression In The Tibetan Community And The Foreign Artist, Imogen Rosenbluth

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Though Tibetan society has always had a literary and creative bent, the genre of secular Tibetan poetry is still very much burgeoning. One of the most unexpected consequences of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the subsequent exile of thousands of Tibetans has been the emergence of a new genre of testimonial writing by refugees, the majority of which is written in the English language. The corpus of work within this genre is still relatively small, but growing all the time, and this expansion begs several complex questions, foremost of which is what purpose such writing serves and to whom …

Education, Crystal C. Gray

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

Education is a spoken word poem that explores many aspects of the African American struggle within (self-knowledge). It starts with an African American college student who is disappointed with the lack of courses about her culture. Most curricula in the United States tend to be from a Eurocentric perspective, leaving out a multitude of information about people of color. All groups of people of color have unique experiences, however, African Americans have the most known (or perhaps I should say, unknown) history. The standard explanation of their existence is often limited to the start of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, when …

[Introduction To] More Than Shelter: Activism And Community In San Francisco Public Housing, Amy L. Howard

Bookshelf

In the popular imagination, public housing tenants are considered, at best, victims of intractable poverty and, at worst, criminals. More Than Shelter makes clear that such limited perspectives do not capture the rich reality of tenants’ active engagement in shaping public housing into communities. By looking closely at three public housing projects in San Francisco, Amy L. Howard brings to light the dramatic measures tenants have taken to create—and sustain and strengthen—communities that mattered to them.

More Than Shelter opens with the tumultuous institutional history of the San Francisco Housing Authority, from its inception during the New Deal era, through …

Du Chaâba À La Banlieue : Espaces Et Négation De L’Autre Chez Azouz Begag Et Thomté Ryam, Lise Mba Ekani

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article concerns itself with the representations of space in the novels of Azouz Begag and Thomté Ryam. The author observes that from the chaâba to the banlieue, one can assert that the distribution of space suggests the exclusion and the negation of France’s postcolonial other. Ultimately, the article contends that if Beur fiction was pivotal in shedding light on injustice, the banlieue novel blends aesthetics and politics to call for a different France, one in which assimilation and difference can be transcended.

Cape Town Performance Poetry: The Activist’S Pen Is Mighty, Kelsey Rae Brattin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Beginning with a look back to historical Xhosa oral traditions and then examining the role of performance poetry in resistance during Apartheid, this paper explores the existence of contemporary Cape Town performance poetry in a setting that has been a home to poets for centuries. Specifically, this project is a look into the space, mental and physical, that exists within Cape Town’s current performance poetry scene for themes of resistance and activism. Through the observation of public poetry performances in local bookstores and coffeehouse, and through interviews with poets and audience members, contemporary attitudes of writers and community members toward …

Idéal Romantique Et Projet Social Dans C’Est Vole Que Je Vole De Nicole Cage-Florentiny, Hanétha Vété-Congolo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this novel, first published in 1998 and then in 2006, martinican female writer Nicole Cage-Florentiny portrays a young woman, Malaïka, who seeks refuge in madness to escape the turmoil of her life. She is under the yoke of harsh living conditions including societal conformism which, according to Fanon, provokes the « existential deviation » (1953 : 31) of the individual. Despite all, Malaïka advocates a society that would integrate all its members and promote equality. C’est vole que je vole aims at brushing Martinique’s ability to display a sound socialization. The author aims at offering a criticism of her …

Écriture Du Destin Et Destin De L’Écriture, Regards Croisés Sur René Philombe Et Mongo Beti, Pierre Fandio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The objectives of self-determination displayed by the Cameroon cultural and political agents look identical. However the present communication, that examines the reception of the works of Mongo Beti and René Philombe in Cameroon and its implications on the relationship between the writers and the dominating political order, reveals that the harmony is only a concealment. In fact, the political order conceives the institution of its own discourse exclusively either in terms of exclusion all nonconformist speech or in terms of its dominance.

Que Tal: An Anthology Of Student Writings, Mexican American Graduate Studies, San Jose State University

¡Qué Tal!

Special Edition

Writings: Poem February 9th, 1953, Edna Louise Saffy

Saffy Collection - All Textual Materials

Poems. Writings.