Recent poetry scholarship has begun to trace how some of the most normative concepts in poetry studies (meter, free verse, lyric, the speaker, voice) are enmeshed within broader systems of white supremacy and imperialism. Yet these concepts often go unchallenged in college classrooms. This seminar asks, how might this scholarship change the way we teach poetry and poetics--in any language, at any level, from Introduction to Poetry to advanced graduate seminars?

We welcome papers rethinking poetry curricula, learning theories, and assessment ecologies, as well as papers introducing poetry-centered teaching tools that confront entrenched injustice. How might our poetry classrooms challenge systems of oppression and build toward a more just future? How do we illuminate for our students the long, messy, heterogeneous histories behind the ways we approach poems? How might new ways of teaching poetry extend or challenge fields such as genre studies, gender and sexuality studies, or critical race theory? In what ways do emerging digital tools recast the use of longstanding analytical methods, like scansion and close reading? How might new poetry pedagogies reshape the framing concepts of comparative literature? 

Please submit paper abstracts of 250 words to the ACLA portal by October 31, 2020. Questions to organizers are welcome.