ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WE LAMENT, FIRST OF ALL, the passing of Adrienne Rich, as we have been both moved and inspired by her memory and legacy. We extend that sense of inspiration to Mina Shaughnessy and all the great writer/poet/teachers of the City University of New York, one of North America’s most important public institutions. These figures include the pioneering scholar Barbara Christian, Aijaz Ahmad, Toni Cade Bambara, Addison Gayle, David Henderson, June Jordan, Leonard Kriegel, Audre Lorde, Larry Neil, and others, many of whom, unfortunately, are no longer with us. Our intention for this project is that it be one of many, culminating in an anthology of teaching and related materials by these crucial figures, part of a political, pedagogical, and poetic movement that changed the face of higher education. There is a great need, now more than ever, to historicize ourselves within the institution and the events that shaped it, while also making available the resources through which this crucial history can be learned, absorbed, reanimated, and passed on.

Our work could not have been done without the blessing and permission of the Adrienne Rich Literary Estate, and we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks and gratitude to Pablo and Jacob Conrad. Thanks as well to Billy Joe Harris for facilitating the initial encounter. We would also like to give our warm thanks to Ellen Shea, Head of Research Services, and her staff at the Schlesinger Library, the Radcliffe Institute, where these materials are housed.

erica kaufman had the initial idea, as an outgrowth of her work in composition—the teaching of writing and poetics—reflected in her introduction. Having no time to actually get to the archive, though, in classic Lost & Found fashion, we put a team together. Stefania Heim, in Somerville for a year, did the actual archival research and document gathering. Conor Tomás Reed kept us meeting and working as a group while providing the background research that went into his accompanying essay on the wider political and institutional context of the period. Talia Shalev focused on the relationship between poetics and pedagogy. Kristin Moriah, on a research fellowship in Germany, provided an overall sense of the pedagogical implications of these materials for the present, while providing the biography. Iemanjá Brown and Wendy Tronrud concentrated on the relationship between education and incarceration, an issue that partially framed our way of thinking about these materials, and that will go into future projects. General Editor Ammiel Alcalay and Consulting Editor Kate Tarlow Morgan, both veterans of mid-1970s CUNY, provided a longer-range perspective and constant editorial input. We all transcribed, organized, and discussed the materials at length.

erica kaufman would like to thank Sondra Perl for her advice along the way; Mark McBeth whose archive class led to her discovery of these materials; Joan Retallack, as her “pedagogical ear,” Julia Bloch, Al Filreis, and Charles Bernstein at Jacket2, and Simone White for reading drafts and responding. Stefania Heim thanks her students at Hunter College, particularly Kelly Roberts, for pushing her, in true Rich fashion, to keep learning. Conor Tomás Reed extends gratitude to the Rich and SEEK family trees, Sydney Van Nort and the City College Cohen Library Archives staff, Taqiyya Haden and The Paper, Jane Marcus and other firebrand City College faculty, fellow Graduate Center dreamers and hierarchy-saboteurs, Free University-NYC, teachers and students, friends and comrades, family and loved ones, and all who will use these movement lessons for the fire next time. Kristin Moriah thanks the Freie Universitaet Berlin for a research fellowship that allowed her to do some of this work. Iemanjá Brown expresses her gratitude to Andrew Wolf for earnest questions that continue to teach her, and Wendy Tronrud would like to acknowledge teachers and students who shaped her experiences; Mr. Zumbiel, her 9th grade English teacher, gave her the first model of a teacher-poet. All the professors from Bard College’s MAT program, especially B. C. Craig, were instrumental in teaching her how to advocate for and support learners in a student-centered classroom, particularly within a public school setting. Nancy Mann and the students, teachers and staff at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx provided her with the space to learn and grow as a teacher and Mann continues to fight for a public school that supports students and teachers very much in Rich’s own legacy. Finally, her students at Queens College continue to make teaching the most rewarding profession possible. Talia Shalev would like to thank all her co-editors for making the urgency of research and conversations about teaching and writing—particularly in the context of CUNY—so evident. Ammiel Alcalay and Kate Tarlow Morgan mutually thank all the members of the editorial group and everyone at the Graduate Center involved in Lost & Found.

David Henderson, the first Lost & Found fellow, and a key member of the initial SEEK teaching core and the movement at City College in the late 1960s, provided invaluable first-hand knowledge, both through discussions and in an interview with Conor, as well as close readings of the material. We thank him profusely for his integrity and commitment to the historical record. We would like to especially thank Professor Emerita Rebecca Mlynarczyk of Kingsborough Community College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, who provided invaluable commentary and suggestions on our initial draft of materials. At a crucial stage, Graduate Center Professor of Urban Education Stephen Brier gave us a close reading of institutional issues that proved invaluable; Professor Brier is also the Senior Academic Adviser of the CUNY Digital History Archive, a project where we hope further materials related to the poet/teachers of The City University of New York will find a home. Thanks as well to Blake Schwartzenbach, a student at The Graduate Center, for tracking down archival materials at the Cohen Library, City College.

Aiming for the spirit rather than the letter of the archival document, we have removed erasures and cross-outs for clarity and ease of reading, as well as corrected obvious typos and some misspelled words; it might prove comforting to students, for example, to see that Rich, such an accomplished writer, consistently misspelled “counselor” as “counsellor.” In some cases, when exact dating is indeterminate, we have put our best sense of the date in brackets with a question mark.