Hi everyone! I’m Danica Savonick (Danica or Prof. Savonick, whichever you prefer), and I’m really looking forward to our semester together.
It’s hard to believe that this will be my third year at SUNY Cortland! Prior to teaching at Cortland, I taught at Queens College while completing my Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center.
I spent most of this summer working on my book project, which looks at the reciprocal relations between teaching, writing, and activism in the work of four authors: Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom taught at the City University of New York in the late 1960s. I’m interested in how, for these four authors, their work with students shaped their literature (and vice versa), and how they undertook both teaching and writing as forms of feminist and antiracist activism. In fact, I had the privilege of teaching a course on Audre Lorde this past spring, and got to explore some of these ideas with Cortland students (a few of whom are in this class).
Two topics or questions I’m interested in thinking about with all of you: 1) how theories of race, gender, and sexuality can and should inform teaching methods and 2) how on earth can we create an online class that we all actually look forward to, rather than dreading (screen fatigue has felt like such an exhausting reality these days)?! While there are instructors out there who’ve been teaching transformative, meaningful online classes for decades, for many of us this is a new adventure, and I’m excited to undertake this experiment with all of you.
Here are three photos that express bits and pieces of who I am: 1) a trio of tacos I made during quarantine 2) one of the best books I read over the summer and 3) my cat, who is, in actuality, a giant panther trying to pass as a cat, and with whom I am mildly obsessed.
Looking forward to meeting you all on Monday, August 31 at 4:20 pm!
Quarantine tacos 
One of the best books I read this summer 
Thought I was adopting a regular cat, grew into a miniature panther
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Hello Professor Savonick,
Your mini panther is adorable! What is their name? Those tacos look incredible and that photo is so aesthetically-pleasing as well. I’d never had a taco with egg, but now I want to give it a try. It make take awhile though since the peak of my cooking skills is being able to make custom cup ramen and crepes, but I’ll do my best.
Looking forward to participating in this class! ^.^
Hello Danica! I am also impressed at how those writers turned teaching and writing into forms activism. I hope to someday do the same, yet I am not aware of how I might do it yet. I took Tyler’s class in Queer Theory so I am familiar with some of the readings we will be doing in this class. I am especially interested in the “hypothesis that teaching and learning methods are inseparable from the material itself” (syllabus) because it relates closely to what I learned in my educational psychology course regarding inclusion and utilizing diverse teaching methods. I think this class will be helpful, not just in our studies, but in life as well.