Introducing New Assistant Professor Daniel Summerhill
Tell us about your background as a scholar and teacher.
I'm a poet first and everything else second, so I suppose my scholarship is rooted in the art of truth-telling, chronicling and excavation. I studied as an undergraduate in New York and then returned to the East Coast to get an MFA from Boston College. Both my creative and academic work revolve around the ideas of linguistic justice. Divine, Divine, Divine, my first collection of poetry, explores that through a creative lens. Fittingly, after graduating, I became Assistant Professor of Poetry, Social Action & Composition Studies at California State University-Monterey Bay where I taught for four years before transitioning to SCU.
What are you working on now?
I am working on two separate projects. The first is my third collection of poems, which in large part is inspired by James Baldwin. Separately, I am working on my first collection of creative nonfiction essays which are part personal narrative and part cultural criticism.
Why Santa Clara?
The Bay Area is home and I was moved by my time getting to know the campus and its faculty. The culture created by the mission, vision and values is another draw -- especially the ideas of educating the entire person. There seems to be a desire to shatter the walls between the institution and the community and I dig that!
What do you do in your spare time?
I don't have much of that these days between fatherhood and family. Besides teaching and when I am not writing or reading, I like to play basketball and check out live music or art and such. I am probably also listening to Frank Ocean, Dijon or Tems or K Dot or JID or someone from the Bay or or —