Joshua Clover

Last updated
Joshua Clover
Clover photo.jpg
BornJoshua Miller Kaplan
(1962-12-30) December 30, 1962 (age 60)
Berkeley, California
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Boston University;
Iowa Writers' Workshop
GenreScholarship; Poetry
Notable worksRiot.Strike.Riot: The New Era of Uprisings,Madonna anno domini

Joshua Clover (born December 30, 1962, in Berkeley, California) is a writer and a professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California Davis.

Contents

He is a published scholar, poet, critic, and journalist whose work has been translated into more than a dozen languages; his scholarship on the political economy of riots has been widely influential in political theory. He has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry and two times in Best Music Writing , and has received an individual grant from the NEA as well as fellowships from the Cornell Society for the Humanities, The University of California Humanities Research Institute, and Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. His first book of poetry, Madonna anno domini, received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1996. [1]

Life

Born in Berkeley, CA, a graduate of Boston University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Clover is a professor of English Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis, and was the distinguished Holloway poet-in-residence at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002–2003. [2]

Clover's given name at birth was Joshua Miller Kaplan but via legal change he took his mother's maiden name. His mother, Carol J. Clover, is the originator of the final girl theory in a book on horror films and a professor emerita at the University of California at Berkeley.

Scholarship

Clover's scholarly books in addition to many articles and book chapters have all in various ways considered changes to daily life, work, politics, and social struggle since the Sixties. Originally studying poetry, music, and film, he has come to focus since the 2008 economic crisis directly on political-economic matters. Basic concerns include the array of changes wrought by deindustrialization in the west, the decline of the United States empire and the future of global capitalism. Particular focuses run from the rise of office work to the nature of financialization, from the world after the end of the Soviet project to the transformations of social movements, all considered within the framework of Marxist value theory, with a particular interest in racialized regimes of power and struggle against state and capital. Riot.Strike.Riot: the New Era of Uprisings, a widely cited study translated into five languages other than English, "offers a decidedly materialist theory of the riot and sketches a unique history of the return of the riot to the center of social struggles"; [3] the Chicago Tribune called it "timely and audacious." [4]

In addition to his scholarship he has been a journalist since the Nineties. He has contributed columns, often on popular culture and politics, to various journals, including the column "Pop and Circumstance" for The Nation and "Marx and Coca-Cola" for Film Quarterly . He is a former senior writer and editor at the Village Voice and Spin . He has contributed to The New York Times , the Los Angeles Review of Books , and many other venues, sometimes under the name "Jane Dark."

Poetry

He has published three volumes of poetry in addition to shorter works for which he has won various prizes and fellowships; poems have been anthologized in multiple volumes and languages, including the Norton Introduction to Literature (10th edition, 2009). His poetry often concerns the life of great cities and the twilight character of late modernity, particularly the way it is entangled with the products of overdeveloped capitalism (especially the pleasures of popular music) and how we will have to forsake all of those pleasures for our freedom. Judith Butler has written that " In this brilliant volume, the fragmented world of a late and lost modernity has its own moving and lucid affect, its forms of aliveness." [5] Increasingly his work has concerned direct political struggle; as one reviewer noted, "Few books, let alone books of poetry, arrive boasting a blurb from Entertainment Weekly while simultaneously, and aggressively, declaring the attempt to establish a Marxist lyric praxis." [6] Clover has also translated poetry from the Dutch and French, including the book Tarnac: A Preparatory Act, by Jean-Marie Gleize. [7]

He is one of the co-founders, along with Jasper Bernes and Juliana Spahr, of the poetry press Commune Editions. In 2020, the press was awarded the American Book Award as the best publisher in the United States. [8]

Political Work

Clover has written extensively about the campus movements against tuition increases and student debt, about the Occupy movement, and about free speech and policing both on and off the university campus. In January 2012, he and eleven students at the University of California, Davis, engaged in a sit-in to protest the financial arrangements between U.S. Bank and the university, permanently closing the bank branch along with ending the university's particular arrangements with the bank. The protesters, who became known as the "Davis Dozen," were charged with "obstructing movement in a public place and conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor." [9] One month before the trial was scheduled to begin, the Davis Dozen accepted a plea deal from the Yolo County District Attorney. Under the terms of that agreement, the protesters received an infraction notice ticket and agreed to perform 80 hours of community service. [10]

Controversy

Nick Irvin, in a February 2019 opinion piece for The California Aggie, drew attention to published comments by Clover suggesting he was in favor of killing police. [11] Among them was the September 2015 SFWeekly interview statement by Clover: "People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed." [12] Clover also was reported by CBS Sacramento to have tweeted in November 2014 “I am thankful that every living cop will one day be dead, some by their own hand, some by others, too many of old age”, and in December of that year “it’s easier to shoot cops when their backs are turned”. [13]

In response for all media requests for comment, Clover said only, "On the day that police have as much to fear from literature professors as Black kids do from police, I will definitely have a statement. Until then, I have nothing further to add." In March 2019 California State Assemblyman James Gallagher gathered over 10,000 signatures on a petition calling for Clover to be fired. [14] UC Davis Chancellor Gary May replied in a letter to Gallagher that "Professor Clover’s statements, although offensive and abhorrent, do not meet the legal requirement for 'true threats' that might exempt them from First Amendment protection. . . . Accordingly, the university will not proceed with review or investigation of concerns regarding Professor Clover’s public statements." [15]

Books

Articles

Essays

Reviews of Clover's Poetry

Trivia

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of California, Davis</span> Public university in Davis, California

The University of California, Davis, is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institution was first founded as an agricultural branch of the system in 1905 and became the seventh campus of the University of California in 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Pinsky</span> American poet, editor, literary critic, academic

Robert Pinsky is an American poet, essayist, literary critic, and translator. His first two terms as United States Poet Laureate were marked by such visible dynamism—and such national enthusiasm in response—that the Library of Congress appointed him to an unprecedented third term. Throughout his career, Pinsky has been dedicated to identifying and invigorating poetry's place in the world. Known worldwide, Pinsky's work has earned him the PEN/Voelcker Award, the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Lenore Marshall Prize, Italy's Premio Capri, the Korean Manhae Award, and the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago, among other accolades. Pinsky is a professor of English and creative writing in the graduate writing program at Boston University. In 2015 the university named him a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, the highest honor bestowed on senior faculty members who are actively involved in teaching, research, scholarship, and university civic life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UC Davis Marching Band</span> Marching band of the University of California, Davis

The UC Davis Marching Band, organized in the fall of 2019, is the official University of California, Davis marching band. It is the successor to the student-run California Aggie Marching Band-uh!, which existed from the 1920s to 2019. In 2018, the Band-uh had roughly 250 members. It performed at home and away games to cheer on the UC Davis Aggies sports teams, marched in parades, and played at events on the UC Davis campus as well as in the surrounding Davis community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al Young</span> American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter (1939–2021)

Albert James Young was an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008. Young's many books included novels, collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. His work appeared in literary journals and magazines including Paris Review, Ploughshares, Essence, The New York Times, Chicago Review, Seattle Review, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, Chelsea, Rolling Stone, Gathering of the Tribes, and in anthologies including the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the Oxford Anthology of African American Literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Turner (American poet)</span> American poet

Brian Turner is an American poet, essayist, and professor. He won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award for his debut collection, Here, Bullet the first of many awards and honors received for this collection of poems about his experience as a soldier in the Iraq War. His honors since include a Lannan Literary Fellowship and NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. His second collection, shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize is Phantom Noise.

Flarf poetry was an avant-garde poetry movement of the early 21st century. The term Flarf was coined by the poet Gary Sullivan, who also wrote and published the earliest Flarf poems. Its first practitioners, working in loose collaboration on an email mailing list, used an approach that rejected conventional standards of quality and explored subject matter and tonality not typically considered appropriate for poetry. One of their central methods, invented by Drew Gardner, was to mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into often hilarious and sometimes disturbing poems, plays and other texts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UC Davis Health Stadium</span>

UC Davis Health Stadium is a 10,743-seat multi-purpose stadium in the western United States, located on the campus of the University of California, Davis in unincorporated Yolo County, California. Opened as Aggie Stadium on April 1, 2007, it replaced Toomey Field and is the home to the UC Davis Aggies football and women's lacrosse teams. Plans call for the stadium to eventually be built out to 30,000 seats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Zapruder</span> American poet

Matthew Zapruder (1967) is an American poet, editor, translator, and professor.

Carol Jeanne Clover is an American professor of Medieval Studies and American Film at the University of California, Berkeley. Clover has been widely published in her areas of expertise, and is the author of three books. Clover's 1992 book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film achieved popularity beyond academe. Clover is credited with developing the "final girl" theory in the horror genre, which has changed both popular and academic conceptions of gender in horror films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Juan Felipe Herrera</span> American writer (born 1948)

Juan Felipe Herrera is an American poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist. Herrera was the 21st United States Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017. He is a major figure in the literary field of Chicano poetry.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is an American poet, editor, publisher, and filmmaker.

The California Aggie is a weekly newspaper distributed in the Davis, California area. It is staffed entirely by UC Davis students and is the official campus newspaper.

Picnic Day is an annual open house event held in April at the University of California, Davis. Picnic Day was first held on May 22, 1909. It has grown to be what is believed to be the largest student-run event in the United States, typically drawing more than 50,000 visitors. In 2009, around 125,000 visitors attended Picnic Day – a new attendance record.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clarence Major</span> American poet, painter and novelist (born 1936)

Clarence Major is an American poet, painter, and novelist; winner of the 2015 "Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts", presented by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. He was awarded the 2016 PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Koethe</span> American poet

John Koethe is an American poet, essayist and professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UC Davis Aggies football</span> American college football team

The UC Davis Aggies football team represents the University of California, Davis in NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The football program's first season took place in 1915, and has fielded a team each year since with the exception of 1918 during World War I and from 1943 to 1945 during World War II, when the campus, then known as the University Farm, was shut down. The team was known as the Cal Aggies or California Aggies from 1922 to 1958 when UC Davis was called the Northern Branch of the College of Agriculture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Weiner</span> American poet (born 1963)

Joshua Weiner is an American poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupy Cal</span> Protest group against economic inequality

Occupy Cal included a series of demonstrations that began on November 9, 2011, on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California. It was allied with the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City, San Francisco Bay Area Occupy groups such as Occupy Oakland, Occupy Berkeley, and Occupy San Francisco, and other public California universities. "Cal" in the name "Occupy Cal" is the nickname of the Berkeley campus and generally refers specifically to UC Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UC Davis pepper spray incident</span> Occupy movement event in 2011

The UC Davis pepper spray incident occurred on November 18, 2011, during an Occupy movement demonstration at the University of California, Davis. After asking the protesters to leave several times, university police pepper sprayed a group of student demonstrators as they were seated on a paved path in the campus quad. The video of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying demonstrators spread around the world as a viral video and the photograph became an Internet meme. Officer Alex Lee also pepper sprayed demonstrators at Pike's direction.

Amy Block Joy is an Emerita Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She is best known for exposing fraudulent activity in a California nutrition education program. She specializes in nutrition and health disparities of diverse populations, nutritional ecology, and ethics. She is an author and advocate for whistleblowers and employee rights. Joy was formerly a Cooperative Extension Specialist, Emeritus at the University of California, Davis

References

  1. List of winners of the Walt Whitman Award
  2. "Poet-in-Residence". Archived from the original on 2007-06-13. Retrieved 2006-10-31.
  3. "Riotology," Buescher-Ulbrich & Lieber, https://journals.psu.edu/soar/article/download/61390/61687/69693
  4. Chicago Tribune, 5/52016, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-prj-riot-strike-riot-joshua-clover-20160505-story.html
  5. Clover, Joshua (3 April 2006). The Totality for Kids. ISBN   0520246004.
  6. "Patrick James Dunagan Reviews Joshua Clover's Red… | Poetry Foundation". 2 February 2022.
  7. "Tarnac, a preparatory act".
  8. "Here are the winners of the 2020 American Book Awards. ‹ Literary Hub". 14 September 2020.
  9. "DA to charge students, prof in campus bank protests". Davis Enterprise. 30 March 2012.
  10. "Davis Dozen settlement reaches plea deal before trial". The Aggie. 2013-05-09. Retrieved 2022-06-29.
  11. Irvin, Nick (2019-02-25). "A UC Davis professor thinks cops "need to be killed"". The Aggie. Archived from the original on 2019-02-26.
  12. Karp, Evan (2015-09-17). "The Write Stuff: Joshua Clover on Wearing Intense Knowledge Lightly and Changing Quickly". SFWeekly. Archived from the original on 2019-03-02.
  13. Abrams, Lemor (2019-02-26). "University Professor Condemned For Previous Comments Saying Cops 'Need To Be Killed'". CBS Sacramento. Archived from the original on 2019-02-27.
  14. "Assemblyman Gets 10,000 Petition Signatures Calling For Firing Of UC Davis Professor". CBS Sacramento. 2019-03-13. Archived from the original on 2019-03-22.
  15. May, Gary S. (2019-03-28). "Statements Regarding Public Comments Made by a Tenured Member of Faculty". UC Davis. Archived from the original on 2019-03-29.