Poetry Between the Coordinates: Experiences of PWI in Cultural History Context

Graduate students in medicine and social work came together to write raw poetry using co-created writing prompts to illicit narratives of childhood memories of neighborhood segregation and experiences of a predominantly white university. In this case of this presentation, social separation and implicit bias caused by the U. S. history of discriminatory housing and banking practices (redlining) were the community writing project focus. The raw writing by graduate students was then woven with cultural history investigation of student childhood neighborhood coordinates. These poems and cultural histories of neighborhoods will be shared with the audience. This is a unique approach to collaborative autoethnography. Cultural history method is used to put lived experience and personal, lyrical writing into cultural context and serves as a model of ways educators can listen more closely to student experience and consider the social determinants of high education experiences.

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