Julia Gordon-Bramer Lindenwood University St. Louis, MO wordgirl@nighttimes.com 314.517.0158 Presented at the CFP “Racial Formation, Racial Blindness” Alliance of History Graduate Students Conference on Racial History , University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee February 15, 2014 Speaker introduction: Julia Gordon-Bramer is author of the forthcoming Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath, volume one, to be released this spring by Stephen F. Austin State University Press and currently available for preorder. She teaches Humanities and Creative Writing at Lindenwood University in St. Louis. Additionally, Gordon-Bramer has been a scholar of Sylvia Plath for nearly a decade and a tarot card reader for over 34 years. This presentation draws from both Fixed Stars Govern a Life, and another book of hers in progress exploring Plath, The Magician’s Girl. Julia Gordon-Bramer’s work builds a case that Sylvia Plath’s poems have been widely misunderstood as mere autobiography, and that through poetry and mysticism, Plath was making larger statements about the world. Sylvia Plath’s Hidden Civil Rights Messages By Julia Gordon-Bramer Poet and author Sylvia Plath is rarely recognized for her concern over political issues, and she is not especially well known to have any interest in civil rights. Most readers assume Plath to have been merely a product of her very white, New England, 1950s background, and possibly even racist