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| Susan Eisenberg--author of the new poetry collection Stanley's Girl |
See the show live at 5PM July 26 http:///scatvsomerville.org
A multidisciplinary artist and educator, Susan Eisenberg re-imagines the everyday, playing with scale and juxtaposition to investigate issues of power and social policy. She is a Resident Artist/Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, where she focuses on projects that address patient-centered medical care and employment equity. She has developed two touring exhibits: the photographs and poems of Perpetual Care, and the mixed media installation, On Equal Terms.
First
introduced to the craft of poetry by Denise Levertov, Eisenberg holds a
BA in Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan and an MFA in
Creative Writing from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
The author of the poetry collections Blind Spot (2006), Pioneering (1998), and It’s a Good Thing I’m Not Macho (1984), her poetry appears in numerous anthologies, including American Working-Class Literature
(Oxford). She taught for more than a decade at the University of
Massachusetts Boston, and has worked with students of all ages to
develop tools for self-expression..
Eisenberg
entered the construction industry in 1978, graduating four years later,
as one of the first women in the country to achieve journey-level
status in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW).
She earned her master electrician’s license in 1983, and worked on
Boston-area construction sites for fifteen years, including during
pregnancies with her daughter and son. In 1991, she began to interview
other tradeswomen pioneers from across the United States. These oral
histories became the basis for her nonfiction book, We’ll Call You If We Need You: Experiences of Women Working Construction (1998), selected as a New York Times Notable Book and developed into a not-yet-produced feature film screenplay by MGM.
As
a poet, artist, activist, author and lecturer, Eisenberg helped shape
the cultural expression and analytical thinking of the tradeswomen’s
movement nationally and internationally, speaking at the U.S. Department
of Labor in Washington D.C. and the International Labour Organization
in Geneva, Switzerland. A recipient of the Samuel Gompers Union
Leadership Award, she served on the Planning Committee of the First
National IBEW Women’s Conference, and consulted with the AFL-CIO’s
Center to Protect Workers’ Rights on equity policies.