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[I've also attached the schedule as a PDF.]
Monday 11/2:
The Legacies of the Freedom Struggle: The Student Movement
Read: Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (PDF here)
Watch: Freedom Summer (Link here)
EXPERIMENTAL ESSAYS:
1. Rosa 3. Kieres
2. Madison 4. Tong
Monday 11/9:
"Who gives a fuck about Tocqueville?” It was March of 2015. Anne, Jody, and I were sitting in a restaurant near Jefferson Station, drinking wine. This was our third or fourth meeting in the planning stages of our 360 cluster and I had just revealed my initial cut at a course to be titled “Arts of Freedom.” A couple of other patrons turned their heads at Anne’s question.
Surprised, I stammered a response. “Well, Tocqueville coined the term ‘arts of freedom’; his portrait of early America shows the country at its best and at its worst. This lays the groundwork for confronting the structures of slavery and its aftermath as well as how these might be resisted.”
I have emailed Kathy Boudin, Abdul, and Noelle Hanrahan. Noelle suggested that I… Every prison has ‘a policy’ that allows folks to go in and record. Set specific time that day and time that they can call you.
I have emailed and called Victoria Law, the creator of Tenacious, a zine filled with articles, essays, poetry and art by formerly and currently incarcerated women across the United States. Their works cover subjects like the health care (or lack of health care) system, being HIV-positive inside prison, trying to get an education while in prison, sexual harassment by prison staff and general prison conditions, and giving up children for adoption.
“The frontage road was for shit, but at four-thirty in the morning, riding his skateboard under the hazy orange glow of the road lights, Frank had the whole place to himself, and the wind was freedom.”
pg. 92
“The close warmth of the car was suffocating. No air. Nowhere to go. No choice but to talk without too much thinking. Cass took a deep breath.”
pg. 121
"In a real sense a potato plant is immortal -- the Russet Burbanks that Lloyd, and all of Idaho, grew were literlly chips off the old block of Luther's original. There is something divine in this potency, but it needs care and protection. Unlike grain, Lloyd would say dismissively, which can be stored indefinitely, there is an art to strong potatoes. They come out of the ground at about fifty five degrees and are transported to the cellar, where the temperature is slowly lowere, half a degree a day, until it reaches a careful forty-five. The breathing rate of the potato slows. Usually they can stay that way for almost a year before they start to wither and die. Of course, that is the problem with living things -- they have a life span that cannot be exceeded." (112-113)
Jess Libow was struck by some of you saying, in response to the ASL materials we ask you to read/view last week, that you felt you were "missing something," and asked me to share with you a 20-minute TEDxGallaudet talk, by a Professor of Deaf Studies @ Gallaudet, Dirksen Bauman,
"If so," Geek said, handing it back, "you should keep the book. Maybe you can learn something aboutyour heritage and inclinations."
"You want to know what my heritage has taught me? If you're a cactus, you'd better hang onto your spines." (178)
“That’s what it felt like when I was growing up, like I was a random fruit in a field of genetically identical potatoes.” (4)
Page 69: "For the time being she was intent on her work, poking the woody casing with the point of a pencil...onto a turquoise cafeteria tray that she was using a work surface."
Page 97: "For a while they focused intensively on getting pregnant, timing their lovemaking for months...settled down again, one of them would suggest that they try again."
Page 127: "Phoenix was already having problems. He was smaller and scrawnier...we differentiate between ethnocultural styles of breaking noses."