Danica Savonick

educator, scholar, writer

Open Admissions

I’m delighted to announce that my book manuscript, Open Admissions: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Free College will be published by Duke University Press in Fall 2024!

While authors Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich are best known for their literature, Open Admissions recovers the untold stories of their classrooms. It focuses on their overlapping experiences teaching at the City College of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s, during one of the most controversial moments in U.S. educational history. Through analysis of their archival teaching materials—syllabi, lesson plans, and assignments—alongside their published work, Open Admissions reveals how these renowned writers were also transformative teachers who developed creative methods of teaching their students to advocate for social change. In addition to recovering their pedagogical legacy, it explores how teaching in open admissions fundamentally altered their writing and, with it, the course of American literature and feminist criticism.

Read more

css.php