SJSU Department of English & Comparative Literature presents Picturing Freedom Dreams: Poetry & Comics

In Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002), Robin D. G. Kelley asks, “What are today’s young activists dreaming about? We know what they are fighting against, but what are they fighting for?” (7-8). Picturing Freedom Dreams: Poetry & Comics in Conversation/Community, thinks alongside Kelley’s still crucial question: What are SJSU’s students dreaming about in 2024? The global pandemic and its ongoing effects have exacerbated racial injustices and structural inequalities while also bringing these issues to popular attention in previously unimagined ways. How are our students imagining more just and sustainable futures in response to this pandemic present? What are their individual and collective “freedom dreams”?

Supported by an AEPG from the Arts and the Humanities, Picturing Freedom Dreams: Poetry & Comics’ April event presents a poetry reading and conversation with Mathias Svalina, creator of the Dream Delivery Service, a nomadic art project of permeable dreaming (as featured on NPR, on BBC News, etc.).

Supported by the College of Humanities & the Arts (AEPG) Artistic Excellence Programming Grant.