*Workshops and classes to come*
Feel free to email for more info Emerson dot whitney at goddard dot edu
Mini Manifesto
In the spring of 2024, Goddard College, where I taught and received my undergraduate degree announced its closure. This institute has been part of my life since 2008, when my boss Peter Kaplan at the New York Observer paid me under the table to go to school because he figured Observer would lay us all off, which it did, and in his mind, I was particularly vulnerable without a degree. I’d been to 6 other colleges and couldn’t graduate for the life of me. The undergraduate program at Goddard was finally it. The program was one-on-one focused and centered around my own invented curriculum and process. I was also able to fully focus on my special interest (writing) and not have to deviate to meet random requirements. After growing up in special ed and receiving very little guidance after that, I finally graduated with a college degree from Goddard in 2011 and went on to get an MFA and then a PhD. I came back to Goddard gratefully in 2017 to teach undergraduate creative writing mostly, but also all the things. My brilliant colleagues, Muriel Shockley, Herukhuti Williams, Zelaika Hepworth Clarke, Otto Muller, Leora Gansworth, Sarah Gotowka, and others over the years have shaped all my thoughts about the possibilities of decolonial, re-Indigenizing, pro-Black pedagogy. With this foundation of decolonality, access needs are prioritized for disabled people without diagnosis as a ticket to accommodations, experimental forms and methods of learning are celebrated, learning becomes emotional and circular and new and old. It is a mess and it’s generative and transformational, it’s also queer and trans and disabled and autistic and vibrant as hell. We are in the process of making new forms with this pedagogy that we’ve honed for decades, please stay tuned.