About the Chapter:
This chapter examines a collaboration that took place in the Fall 2014 semester at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, between courses in English literature, dance choreography, and English composition. It highlights the liberatory nature of our approach and chronicles the process. Students in Atik’s Introduction to Literature class read several poems and excerpts of Foucault to generate a working knowledge of concepts such as discrimination, surveillance, and hierarchies of power. They composed personal narratives exploring their own experiences as subjects of observation in a public sphere. Geismar’s choreography students transformed this writing into embodied narratives and shared them with their peers in a live performance. Miller’s English Composition students composed a digital essay exploring the collaboration and its implications.
About the Authors:
Aliza Atik, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English at Queensborough Community College, CUNY. She received her Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 2013 where she won several awards for her scholarship, including an Andrew W. Mellon dissertation fellowship. Dr. Atik’s research interests include Victorian studies, Jewish literature, and Arab/Israeli literature. Her article, “Calibrating the Female Body: Shame, Disgust, and the Recuperative Gaze in Amos Gitai’s Kadosh,” was published in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies. Dr. Atik also works as an assistant editor for the peer-reviewed and MLA-indexed journal Victorian Literature and Culture.
Aviva Geismar, M.F.A. is an Associate Professor in Health, Physical Education and Dance at Queensborough Community College, CUNY. Geismar is also the artistic director of Drastic Action, a contemporary dance company that has performed extensively in New York City, throughout the United States, and in Germany. Geismar’s 2016 education and performance project “Dis/Location (Fort Tryon)” explored the immigrant experience in the largely immigrant neighborhood of Washington Heights, NYC. In February 2018 her choreography was presented on “Soaking Wet” at the West End Theater. Geismar holds an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a B.F.A. from New York University.
Benjamin Lawrance Miller, M.F.A. is an Associate Professor of English at Queensborough Community College, CUNY, where he teaches composition and creative writing. He has an M.F.A. in writing from CalArts and a B.A. in philosophy from Boston University. Most recently, he has published creative work in Entropy, BLYNKT, and Literary Orphans. He is the co-author of “What Trump Gets Right and Wrong About Conspiracy,” an editorial in Inside Higher Ed.
Michel Foucault, "Discipline and Punish"
George Kuh, “High-Impact Educational Practices”
“Go Public: A Day in the Life of an American School District”,
For additional online resources related to Dr. Atik’s portion of the chapter, please click here.
For additional online resources related to Professor Geismar’s portion of the chapter, please click here.
For additional online resources related to Professor Miller’s portion of the chapter, please click here.
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