2012 Theses Doctoral

Projective Citizenship--The Reimagining of the Citizen in Post-War American Poetry

Smith, Lytton Jackson

This dissertation examines the work of four poets writing in a projective or "open field" tradition in post-war America: Charles Olson, Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, Susan Howe, and Myung Mi Kim. It considers the way these poets engage, via innovations in poetic form, with conceptions of the citizen and meanings of citizenship at different historical moments in the United States. Drawing on recent developments in citizenship theory which have focussed on what Engin Isin calls "acts of citizenship," "Projective Citizenship--The Reimagining of the Citizen in Post-War American Poetry" suggests that poetry might offer a means for imagining alternative notions of the citizen, conceiving of citizens as active agents rather than passive subjects.