Simon Abramowitsch

"The spirit of the people is greater than the man's technology." -Huey P. Newton

Twitter: @ambitionsaz

Blog: btownthinking.wordpress.com

Project Podcast: archivingtherainbow.wordpress.com or on Soundcloud soundcloud.com/rainbowsign

EDUCATION

Ph.D. Candidate, English, Designated Emphasis in African American Studies, University of California, Davis (Expected 2017)

M.A., English, Howard University, Washington, D.C. (2009)

B.A., Eugene Lang College, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY (2001)

DISSERTATION

"Under the Sign of the Rainbow: The Production of Multi-Ethnic Literature in the San Francisco Bay Area from the 1960s to the 1990s"

This study documents the literary and political history of multi-ethnic literature in the San Francisco Bay Area from the mid-1960s to mid-1990s. I track this local literary history from 1960s ethnic nationalist and student movements, through the rise of multi-ethnic independent publishing in the 1970s and 80s, to the development of ethnic literary criticism and theory at UC Berkeley in the 1980s and 90s. I engage this history in order to examine “multi-ethnic American literature” as a concept and category, to consider its development, its problems and promises.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

20th century multi-ethnic American literature; African American literature; race and ethnicity; literature and social/political movements; Black Power/Black Arts studies; the 1960s and 1970s; problems of literary canon and categorization; California and the San Francisco Bay Area; hip hop arts and culture; public humanities.

DISTINCTIONS

*Public Scholar, Mellon Public Scholars Program, UC Davis Humanities Institute (Spring 2016-Summer 2016)

*Committee Member, Humanists@Work Graduate Student Advisory Committee, University of California Humanities Research Institute (2015-Present)

*Bancroft Fellow, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (2014-2015)

*Selected Participant, Seminar in Experimental Criticism and Theory IX | Johannesburg Workshop of Theory and Criticism, 2014 Session: Archives of the Non-Racial (Summer 2014)

*Awardee, Principles of Community Awards for Graduate Teaching Assistants, Office of Campus Community Relations, UC Davis (Spring 2014)

TEACHING

*Instructor, ENL 3: Introduction to Literature, English Department, UC Davis (2013-2014, 2015-Present)

• ENL 3, "Black and White and Read All Over: Writing Literature, Writing Race" (Spring 2016)
• ENL 3, "Go Back to ________!: Literature and Citizenship" (Fall 2015, Winter 2016)
• ENL 3, "Others, Outsiders, and Outliers" (Spring 2014)
• ENL 3, "Literature: What Is It Good For?" (Fall 2013, Winter 2014)

*Instructor, HUM 002B: American Humanities Forum, "Justice or Just Us: Policing and Race in the Black Humanities, Slavery to the Present", Humanities Program, UC Davis (Summer 2015)

*Instructor, UWP 101: Advanced Composition, University Writing Program, UC Davis (Summer 2015)

*Instructor, UWP 1: Expository Writing, University Writing Program, UC Davis (2011-2013)

*Teaching Assistant, English Department, UC Davis (2010-2011)

*Instructor, English 1A and English 102, Chabot College, Hayward, CA (Spring 2010)

*Graduate Writing Tutor, Howard University, Washington, D.C. (2007-2009)

*Teacher, Middle School Language Arts, D.W. Griffith Middle School, Los Angeles, CA (2004-2007)