Commentaries - March 2018

Wai Chee Dimock, 'Education Populism'

Wai Chee Dimock, editor of PMLA, published her editor’s comment during fall 2017 on the “education populism” she discerned in several affiliated projects hosted at the Kelly Writers House — among them, PennSound, PoemTalk, ModPo, and the programs offered in the old house at 3805 Locust Walk itself. A PDF copy of the article is available HERE.

Michael Davidson: 'Cleavings: Critical Losses in the Politics of Gain'

[Reposted from Disability Studies QuarterlyVol 36, No 2 (2016), where all sources are cited with pertinent footnotes. In the present version, however, I would like to stress the fusion of critical and personal voices by Michael Davidson, himself a pioneer in literature-based disability studies and a poet and essayist of considerable accomplishment. A major essay of his on “the poetics of disability” in the work of Larry Eigner can be found here and on Poems and Poetics. It also forms a chapter in his book Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body, University of Michigan Press, 2008. (J.R.)]

[Reposted from Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 36, No 2 (2016), where all sources are cited with pertinent footnotes. In the present version, however, I would like to stress the fusion of critical and personal voices by Michael Davidson, himself a pioneer in literature-based disability studies and a poet and essayist of considerable accomplishment.