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Poetries – Politics: A Celebration of Language, Art, and Learning celebrates the best of innovative humanities pedagogy and creative graphic design. Designed and implemented during a time of political divisiveness, the Poetries – Politics project created a space of inviting, multilingual walls on the Rutgers campus, celebrating diversity, community, and cross-cultural exchange. This book, like the original project, provides a platform for the incredible generative power of student-led work. Essays feature the perspectives of three students and professors originally involved in the project, reflecting on their learning and exploring the works they selected for the original exhibition. The essays lead to a beautifully illustrated catalogue of the original student designs.

Reproduced in full color and with the accompanying poems in both their original language and a translation, this catalogue commemorates the incredible creative spirit of the project and provides a new way of contemplating these great poetic works.

What leads us to respond politically to the deaths of some citizens and not others? This is one of the critical questions Heather Pool asks in Political Mourning. Born out of her personal experiences with the trauma of 9/11, Pool’s astute book looks at how death becomes political, and how it can mobilize everyday citizens to argue for political change. 

Pool examines four tragedies in American history—the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the lynching of Emmett Till, the September 11 attacks, and the Black Lives Matter movement—that offered opportunities to tilt toward justice and democratic inclusion. Some of these opportunities were taken, some were not. However, these watershed moments show, historically, how political identity and political responsibility intersect and how racial identity shapes who is mourned. Political Mourning helps explain why Americans recognize the names of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland; activists took those cases public while many similar victims have been ignored by the news media. 

Concluding with an afterword on the coronavirus, Pool emphasizes the importance of collective responsibility for justice and why we ought to respond to tragedy in ways that are more politically inclusive.