Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
English
Advisor
Ammiel Alcalay
Committee Members
Celina Su
Matthew K. Gold
Subject Categories
American Literature | American Material Culture | Art Practice | Educational Leadership | Fiction | Humane Education | Other American Studies | Other Education | Poetry | Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education
Keywords
City University of New York, Poetry Studies, Geopoetics, Publics, Counterpublics, Counterinstitutions
Abstract
This dissertation connects discourses in organization studies, movement studies, environmental studies, and poetry studies to explore the possibility of change from within at the nation’s largest, public urban university: the City University of New York. The first two chapters can be described as an institutional autoethnography. I analyze the various strata and activities of CUNY locales through the lens of a poet and administrator. The second chapter narrates my experiences in university administration while positing some theories of change that have come into resolution for me during my tenure. I theorize terms of art including publics, counterpublics, the public sphere, the state, institutions, counterinstitutions, and community in relation to CUNY. The third chapter is a fulcrum that moves the readership away from critical university studies and toward the realm of sociopolitical, environmental, and poetic justice. Poetry here is a tool to help us understand how certain ways of doing, making, and being at the intuitional level transform given norms and structures through daily reflexive and recursive use. That chapters is grounded in the term “geopoetics,” first introduced to me by Celina Su. The fourth and fifth chapters employ key theories borrowed from environmental management and design to consider the role of nature poetry in the fomentation of socioenvironmental change. The abiding principal of the dissertation is that a poet in the institution does not write poetry; a poet in the institution shifts the grammar of the institution so that those who animate its structures might imagine and manifest different forms and futures of governance.
Recommended Citation
Sullivan, Kendra M., "The Work of Morning: Administrative Ecologies & Institutional Poetics" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6156
Included in
American Literature Commons, American Material Culture Commons, Art Practice Commons, Educational Leadership Commons, Fiction Commons, Humane Education Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Other Education Commons, Poetry Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons
