Danica Savonick's new book Open Admissions traces the largely untold story of the teaching experience of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich at the City University of New York (cuny) in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

This period, during which cuny guaranteed tuition-free admission to every city high school graduate, was one of the most controversial in US educational history. Analysing their archival teaching materials – syllabi, lesson plans, and assignments – alongside their published work, Savonick reveals how these renowned writers were also transformative educators who developed creative methods of teaching their students to navigate and change the world. In fact, many of their methods – such as student-led courses, collaborative public projects and the publication of student writing – anticipated the kinds of student-centred and antiracist pedagogies that have become popular in recent years.

In addition to recovering the pedagogical legacy of these writers, Savonick shows how teaching in cuny’s free and open classrooms fundamentally altered their writing and, with it, the course of American literature and feminist criticism.

Danica Savonick is Assistant Professor of English at the State University of New York at Cortland.

Duke University Press, 264pp, 15cm x 23cm, paperback, 2024