Frances Stonor Saunders | Granta Books, 2000 | Book
The book discusses the mid-20th century Central Intelligence Agency efforts to infiltrate and co-opt artistic movements in order to combat political influence from the Soviet Union and expand American political influence, with much funding going through the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Carol Becker (Ed.) | Routledge, 1994 | Book
The book is a collection of essays by international artists and intellectuals who explore the responsibilities between artists and societies in which they live.
June Jordan | Routledge, 1995 | Book
A dedicated guidebook on community-centered poetry practices based on June Jordan's student workshops and leadership.
Aja Monet | Haymarket Books, 2017 | Book
A collection of poems that tackle racism, sexism, genocide, displacement, grief, daughterhood and spirituality.
Dave Randal | Pluto Press, 2017 | Book
Musicians have often wanted to change the world, and many — from underground grime artists to mainstream pop icons — channel that desire through the political power of music. Music has a unique ability to unsettle the most fundamental political and social conventions — or, alternatively, to stabilize the status-quo.
Göran Olsson, 2011 | Watch
This film mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish journalists who came to the US drawn by stories of urban unrest and revolution. Gaining access to many of the leaders of the Black Power Movement — Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver among them — the filmmakers captured intimate moments and remarkably unguarded interviews. Thirty years later, this lush collection was found languishing in the basement of a Swedish television station.
Eric Bennett | University Of Iowa Press, 2015 | Book
Workshops of Empire explores history via the careers of Paul Engle at the University of Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford. In the story of these founding fathers of the discipline, Eric Bennett discovers the cultural, political, literary, intellectual and institutional underpinnings of creative writing programs within the university. He shows how the model of literary technique championed by the first writing programs — a model that values the interior and private life of the individual, whose experiences are not determined by any community, ideology, or political system — was born out of this Cold War context and continues to influence the way creative writing is taught, studied, read and written into the 21st century.