Benjamin Schwartz
Benjamin Schwartz is a classroom teacher and scholar from Southwestern Connecticut. His writing can be found in English Journal, The Journal of Urban Education, Texas Studies in Language and Literature, Studies in American Humor, and Journal of Negro Education. Ben has shared his work as invited talks and conference presentations UNC-Charlotte, Yale University, Belmont University Heritage University, the American Literary Association, NCTE, and the Conference on Community Writing. In 2021, Ben won the Susan Ford Wiltshire Award from Vanderbilt's Department of Gender and Sexuality for his essay entitled "'We, the People's Plaza...': Nashville's 2020 Uprising and Its Implications for Activist Praxis." His dissertation focuses on representations of teaching and learning in African American literature.
Specialization(s)
- African American Literature
- American Studies
- Humor
- Music
- Literature on teaching
Representative publications
“‘Don’t Give a Subject’: Poetry and Pedagogy in Mississippi 1964-1965”—Journal of Negro Education (forthcoming, 2023)
“Labor for Literacy, Literacy for Labor: Literacy in the Ex-Slave Interviews of the Federal Writers’ Project” (chapter proposal accepted; to be published in Working through the Federal Writers’ Project: Labor, Place, Archive, and Representation ed. Michele Fazio)
“The Unfinishedness and Untimeliness of A Raisin in the Sun”—Texas Studies in Language and Literature (2023)
“‘Making Such Spaces…Where None Previously Existed’: Interstitial Wit in Fran Ross’s Oreo”—Studies in American Humor (2023)
“Circular Time and Postracial Capitalism in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black”—Studies in American Humor (2022)
“Abolishing Disciplines, Blurring Boundaries: A Review of Bettina Love’s We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom”—Urban Education (2021)
“In Praise of the Unfinished”—English Journal (2018)