Barry Sanders is an American writer and academic. His projects occur increasingly at the intersection of art and activism, and include The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, which Project Censored named one of the top-ten censored stories of 2009, [1] and "Over These Prison Walls," which invites collaborations between artists and incarcerated youth. He is the author of fourteen books and over fifty essays and articles . [2] His 2002 essay for Cabinet, "Bang the Keys Softly: Type-Writers and Their Dis-Contents," has been reprinted in Courier (University Art Museum, SUNY) as well as Ghost in the Machine (New Museum) the catalogue for the art exhibition by the same title that surveyed the constantly shifting relationship between humans, machines, and art. [3] [4] [5] [6]
His book-art projects include a collaboration with printmaker Michael Woodcock, Fourteen Ninety Two or Three, [7] which won Honorable Mention in the Carl Hertzog Awards for Excellence in Book Design. He has given presentations at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (with Ivan Illich); the J. Paul Getty Museum; and the Portland Art Museum, among many others. In 2013, co-curated the show Infinity Device with Anne-Marie Oliver at the Historic Maddox Building in Portland, Oregon.
Sanders has had an extensive academic career and was the first to occupy the Gold Chair at Pitzer College, where he taught the history of ideas and medieval church iconography among other things. Along with Anne-Marie Oliver, he founded and chaired the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research Program at the Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, Pacific Northwest College of Art. [8] [9] [10] He is the Founding Executive Co-Director of the Oregon Institute for Creative Research with Anne-Marie Oliver. [11] [12] [13]
Sanders received an MS from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1960, and an MA from USC—University of Southern California in 1963. He earned a doctorate in Medieval literature from USC in 1966. [8]
Sanders joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University, and helped students start a radical newspaper to protest the war in Vietnam and organized a three-day teach-in. He received death threats and a request from administrators to take his talents elsewhere. A stint at Valley State College (CSUN) in California ended the same way, Sanders was fired in 1971 not long after being arrested at an anti-war protest along with 200 students. [10]
Sanders' book Alienable Rights: The Exclusion of African Americans in a White Man's Land, 1619–2000, with co-author Francis D. Adams, was named a "Notable Book of the Year" by The Detroit Free Press.
In 1972 he started teaching at Pitzer College in Claremont where he became the Gold Chair, and was a professor in the departments of Literature and the History of Ideas for 33 years. He was the first to hold the Peter S. and Gloria Gold Chair at Pitzer, and retired from the college in 2005.
In 2005 Sanders won a five-year appointment as Senior Fulbright Scholar, to investigate the idea of the Commons in Greece. [14]
He was featured on WNYC's Radiolab program in 2008, and is a contributing editor of North American Review. [10]
Sanders taught at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon. [8] He and Anne Marie Oliver are the Founding Co-chairs of the MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at the PNCA Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies and the Ford Institute for Visual Education. [15] His projects increasingly occur at the intersection of art and activism. [8]
Barry Sanders is the author and co-author of fourteen books and over fifty essays and articles, and has twice been a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
Pitzer College is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. One of the Claremont Colleges, the college has a curricular emphasis on the social sciences, behavioral sciences, international programs, and media studies. Pitzer is known for its social justice culture and experimental pedagogical approach.
The Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) is an art school of Willamette University and is located in Portland, Oregon. Established in 1909, the art school grants Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees and graduate degrees including the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and Master of Arts (MA) degrees. It has an enrollment of about 500 students. The college merged with Willamette University in 2021.
David Hume Kennerly is an American photographer. He won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his portfolio of photographs of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden. He has photographed every American president since Lyndon B Johnson. He is the first presidential scholar at the University of Arizona.
Joseph Victor O'Connor is an Irish novelist. His 2002 historical novel Star of the Sea was an international number one bestseller. Before success as an author, he was a journalist with the Sunday Tribune newspaper and Esquire magazine. He is a regular contributor to Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and a member of the Irish artists' association Aosdána.
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Floyd Skloot is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Some of his work concerns his experience with neurological damage caused by a virus contracted in 1988.
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John Stauffer is Professor of English, American Studies, and African American Studies at Harvard University. He writes and lectures on the Civil War era, antislavery, social protest movements, and photography.
Robin Coste Lewis is an American poet, artist, and scholar. She is known primarily for her debut poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2015––the first time a poetry debut by an African-American had ever won the prize in the National Book Foundation's history, and the first time any debut had won the award since 1974. Critics called the collection "A masterpiece", "Surpassing imagination, maturity, and aesthetic dazzle", "remarkable hopefulness ... in the face of what would make most rage and/or collapse", "formally polished, emotionally raw, and wholly exquisite". Voyage of the Sable Venus was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award, and the California Book Award. The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Buzz Feed, and Entropy Magazine all named Voyage one of the best poetry collections of the year. Flavorwire named the collection one of the 10 must-read books about art. And Literary Hub named Voyage one of the "Most Important Books of the Last Twenty Years". In 2018, MoMA commissioned both Lewis and Kevin Young to write a series of poems to accompany Robert Rauschenberg's drawings in the book Thirty-Four Illustrations of Dante's Inferno. Lewis is also the author of Inhabitants and Visitors, a chapbook published by Clockshop and the Huntington Library and Museum. Her next book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, was published by Knopf in 2022.
Thomas Manley is an American academic administrator who last served as the president of Antioch College until December 1, 2020.
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Kathleen Dean Moore is a philosopher, writer, and environmental activist from Oregon State University. Her early creative nonfiction writing focused on the cultural and spiritual values of the natural world, especially shorelines and islands. Her more recent work is about the moral issues of climate change.
Justin Hocking is an American essayist and writer of memoir, literary nonfiction, and short stories.
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