MA in Individualized Studies Program
I am… an artist-scholar, a poet, theatre-artist and playwright–––a vagabond, itinerant, educator and passionate troubadour.
My family tells the story of how I would at the age of 3, on the Caribbean island of Dominica, accompany my grandfather each day to the market. Upon returning home, I would plop my grandfather’s hat on my head, take hold of one of the large fruit sacks, now empty, and traipse around the dining room table, sack in tow, regaling my family with the stories I had collected at market that day.
So… I have become a collector of stories…my poems appear in national literary journals. I have performed my poetry at venues throughout the country, and have acted at both major regional theatres and smaller independent experimental theatres.
While completing my MA in African American Studies and pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry, I developed an interest in ethnography and material culture anthropology. I co-authored an original ethnographic study of African American women’s diverse spiritual practices and traditions, have looked to material culture and ethnographic research as source material for poems and performance, and continue to experiment with weaving together memoir, literary and cultural analysis.
A bit of a hybrid, I have spent the last 10 years actively engaged in interdisciplinary and cross-genre approaches to creating written, spoken and dramatic art that seeks an inter-play between oral and literary formal traditions and which excavates and give voice to the “other,” the “outcast” the “insider/outsiders” those personal and collective narratives often marginalized by the prevailing narratives of American and North American identity. In addition to adjunct teaching at colleges and universities, I have been poet-in-residence at an elementary school, facilitated youth writing workshops at an urban arts day camp and led community courses on Black Women’s Writing. Influenced by the work of Paulo Freire, I believe that education like writing like performance art is a transformative conversation empowering one to be the author of one’s own life story––– to engage in the world with the articulate capacity to collaborate in the co-visioning and co-authoring of our collective and communal realities. I look forward to joining the Goddard community and collaborating with students and colleagues as we seek to articulate the ways in which our work can be both rigorous and inventive, visionary and grounded, critical and forgiving. For as Hafiz, the Persian mystic reminds us, “When the violin is ready to forgive, it starts singing!” And as Audre Lorde reminds us, there is great power in doing the work our souls must do.
What do I do to feed my singing soul? Converse with friends. Talk and talk and talk! Go out dancing. Salsa. Swing. Deep house. Neo-soul. Old-school funk. Take long, long walks and breathe. Go to the movies. Go the movies. Go to the movies. Practice yoga and exhale. Visit the Botanical Gardens or Arboretum in whichever city I currently find myself… and pray. Listen to jazz–––Abbey Lincoln, John Coltrane, Cassandra Wilson… Spend time. Alone. Spend time. Spend time with my family. Visit a body of water, salt-water… and swim.
Educational Background: BA, English Lit. (McGill University with undeclared minors in Economic Theory and Political Science): MA African American Studies (Temple University… where I studied with Sonia Sanchez); MFA Creative Writing (Brown University… where I began acting); 3-year graduate theatre conservatory training (Trinity Rep Conservatory).
Awards include: Connelly-Winehart Award, The American Academy of Religion, Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference; Providence Athenaeum Philbrick Poetry Prize for New England Poets; Peter Kaplan Acting Fellow, Trinity Repertory Company; Rhode Island Foundation New Works Grant; Rhode Island Council for The Humanities Script-Development Grant; Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Grant; and scholarships to the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Cave Canem Summer Poetry Retreat.
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Nehassaiu deGannes, MA, MFA