Department of English

Walt Whitman and the People’s Press: A Course to Design and Program a Mobile Printing Space as a Public Art Project

Inspired by Whitman at 200, a region-wide celebration of Walt Whitman, this hands-on and collaborative course will to engage students in with artists, writers, community leaders and the public to design and program a mobile poetry printing facility that recognizes the complicated legacy of Walt Whitman in the 21st Century.  To do this students and instructors will consider Whitman’s poetry as well as in his historical period and his place in Philadelphia and Camden.  At the same time students will learn to use a press, design materials and create their own multimedia responses to Whitman.  Students in this course should expect to read a great deal of poetry but also to be ready to work with their classmates to create responses to Whitman and to see and experience Philadelphia and Camden in new ways.