Architectures of Freedom: Literary Collaboration in Contemporary American Poetry

The dissertation, “Architectures of Freedom: Literary Collaboration in Contemporary American Poetry” uses the praxis of the U.S. third world feminists to analyze literary collaborations from a contemporary cohort of writers. As developed by Chela Sandoval, the defining aspect of the praxis of the U.S. third world feminists is differential consciousness. Differential consciousness is the ability to form coalitions within and beyond different communities not just for personal survival, but through personal survival to transform social oppressions. This dissertation animates Sandoval’s apparatus, which she calls a methodology of the oppressed, to analyze how a current cohort of writers are using literary collaboration to decolonize globalization. \ud \ud The three collaborations the dissertation analyzes are the artblog Pënz (It’s Pronounced Pants), conceptual artists Mendi+Keith Obadike, and Encyclopedia Project, an editorial collaboration. Taken together these three collaborations offer a powerful blueprint for decolonizing globalization for Pënz decolonizes time, M+K decolonizes space (geographic and digital), and Encyclopedia decolonizes knowledge. \u