Scientists and Poets #Resist is a collection of creative nonfiction, personal narrative, and poetry. This volume is a conversation between poets and scientists and a dialogue between art and science. The authors are poets, scientists, and poet-scientists who use the seven words—"vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based"—banned by the Trump administration in official Health and Human Service documents in December 2017 in their contributions. The contributors use the seven words to discuss their work, reactions to their work, and the creative environment in which they work. The resulting collection is an act of resistance, a political commentary, a conversation between scientists and poets, and a dialogue of collective voices using banned words as a rallying cry—
Scientists and Poets #Resist—a warning that censorship is an issue connecting us all, an issue requiring a collective aesthetic response. This book can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as a springboard for reflection and discussion in a range of courses in the social sciences, education, and creative writing.
Sandra L. Faulkner, Ph.D. (1999), The Pennsylvania State University, is Professor of Communication at Bowling State University. She has authored or co-authored over 70 books, articles, and chapters, including
Poetic Inquiry: Craft, Method, and Practice (Routledge, 2019).
Andrea England, Ph.D., Western Michigan University, is Adjunct Professor of English at that university. Her work has appeared in
Midwestern Gothic,
Sonora Review, and elsewhere, including the chapbooks
Other Geographies (Creative Justice Press, 2017) and
Inventory of a Field (Finishing Line Press, 2014).
Read Sandra L. Faulkner's interview with the Napkin Poetry Reviewhere!
Acknowledgements
Science-Based Vulnerability
Part 1
1. It Begins with Our Words
Daniela Elza 2. Rescue the Words
Norma Wilson 3. Evidence-Based
Jane Piirto 4. Notes from Indiana: The Crossroads of America, 2018
Charnell Peters 5. Late Term
Jessica Smartt Gullion 6. Before Roe vs. Wade
Sarah Brown Weitzman 7. The Double Helix Is Not Two-Faced, It Is an Embrace
Elizabyth A. Hiscox 8. That Light Bill
Samantha Schaefer
Part 2
9. Kidnapping Children and Calves (of a Tender Age)
Lee Beavington 10. What Does Transgender Look Like?
Shalen Lowell 11. Woman with PCOS Lingers on the Possibilities of Science
Minadora Macheret 12. Half a Schroedinger
Karen L. Frank 13. Bubbles
Kris Harrington 14. The Ease and Difficulty of Hating and Loving One’s Self
Franklin K. R. Cline 15. Seven Thoughts about Butterflies
Ben Paulus 16. It Takes a Village
Michelle Bonczek Evory 17. The Capital of Failure
Scott M. Bade
Part 3
18. Field Notes & Marginalia
Sandy Feinstein and Bryan Shawn Wang 19. =
Terri Witek 20. America, My America
Sarah Brown Weitzman 21. Expressive Writing Paradigm: An Experiment in Righting
Jessica Moore 22. To Beat the Banned
Scott Wiggerman 23. Four Years
Jennifer K. Sweeney 24. While the Offering Stales in the Calm
Mark Kerstetter 25. Photosynthesis
Susan Cohen
Questions and Activities for Further Discussion
Notes on Contributors
Students, teachers, scientists, poets, academic and public libraries, and the general public interested in literary art as resistance to oppression and censorship, and the connection between science and art, and in particular, poetry.