The Humanities Reloaded


Book Description

This volume examines the crisis of humanities narratives in the context of neoliberal capitalism and of the emergence and consolidation of the metrics-driven, corporate, managerial university. Do narratives of the crisis of the humanities mobilize specific notions of value and prestige? How are these notions classed, gendered and racialized? How do narratives of the crisis of the humanities relate to current debates and contestations surrounding decolonization? Does the crisis of a traditional configuration of the humanities open up opportunities to use their institutional space for work that is both socially and politically relevant and academically rigorous? The aim is to provide a counter-narrative of the present and future of the humanities. In addition to the study of a multiplicity of media texts and other multimodal expressive forms, formats and platforms and genres, a communicative turn in the humanities entails deepening the study of the value chains in which they are inserted and their conditions of production, circulation and reception. Communicative and digital capitalism, now labelled the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is on its way to bringing its own waves of struggles and confrontations to our campuses and beyond, to which humanities scholars and activists can make a vital contribution—should some of us decide to do so. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students of art, literature, media and cultural studies, education, politics, sociology, and social and cultural anthropology. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.




Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts


Book Description

Jane Austen was a keen consumer of the arts throughout her lifetime. The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts considers how Austen represents the arts in her writing, from her juvenilia to her mature novels. The thirty-three original chapters in this Companion cover the full range of Austen's engagement with the arts, including the silhouette and the caricature, crafts, theatre, fashion, music and dance, together with the artistic potential of both interior and exterior spaces. This volume also explores her artistic afterlives in creative re-imaginings across different media, including adaptations and transpositions in film, television, theatre, digital platforms and games.




Curriculum as Confession


Book Description

This book offers a philosophical inquiry into the idea of curriculum as confession and considers how it can help us answer questions of justice, selfhood, and truth. It connects the field of curriculum studies and continental philosophy in order to arrive at new ways of thinking through the concept and act of confession. Utilising a phenomenological and deconstructive approach to thinking about curriculum, the author draws upon scholars including William Pinar, Jacques Derrida, Madeleine Grumet, and Michel Foucault to act as interlocutors for a re-thinking of Pinar’s statement that “we need educational confession.” The chapters argue that confession communicates the interplay between thinking, translation, and transformation, showing how confession can be conceived of as educative in both instrumental and existential ways. An innovative study that explores confession in both “religious” and “secular” senses, and conceptualises curriculum as a theological and phenomenological text, it uniquely explores what confession can reveal, how we tell the truth without violating the other, and how one does justice to the world they experience. It will appeal to scholarly audiences with interests in curriculum studies, teacher education, philosophy of education, religious studies, religious education, and theology.




Crisis Cultures


Book Description

In Crisis Cultures: Narratives of Western Modernity in the Digital Age, Nicholas Manganas argues that crisis should be understood not as a series of isolated events, but as a constitutive state intrinsic to modern Western societies. He explores how this perpetual state of crisis intensifies underlying societal tensions and reshapes cultural and political dynamics. Drawing on a diverse range of case studies, including the Capitol Hill riots in the United States, and analyses from countries such as Spain and Greece, Manganas explores how both digital and traditional media perpetuate crisis narratives that significantly influence contemporary cultural identities and shape political discourses. His analysis also engages with the emotional and temporal aspects of crises, particularly focusing on how digital environments, through their ambient influence, shape and sustain these states of crisis. By reinterpreting the concept of crisis through an interdisciplinary lens that includes historical, political and cultural analysis, the author offers a compelling analysis of its role in shaping the present and futures contours of Western societies.




Dwell


Book Description

At Dwell, we're staging a minor revolution. We think that it's possible to live in a house or apartment by a bold modern architect, to own furniture and products that are exceptionally well designed, and still be a regular human being. We think that good design is an integral part of real life. And that real life has been conspicuous by its absence in most design and architecture magazines.




Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities


Book Description

Infrastructure comprises a combination of sociotechnical, political, and cultural arrangements that provide resources and services. The contributors to this volume show, in their respective fields, how infrastructures are both generative forces and the materialized products of quotidian practices that affect and guide people's lives. Organized via shared conceptual foci, this volume demonstrates infrastructuralist perspectives as an important transdisciplinary approach within the humanities.




Language, Culture, Computation: Computing for the Humanities, Law, and Narratives


Book Description

This Festschrift volume is published in Honor of Yaacov Choueka on the occasion of this 75th birthday. The present three-volumes liber amicorum, several years in gestation, honours this outstanding Israeli computer scientist and is dedicated to him and to his scientific endeavours. Yaacov's research has had a major impact not only within the walls of academia, but also in the daily life of lay users of such technology that originated from his research. An especially amazing aspect of the temporal span of his scholarly work is that half a century after his influential research from the early 1960s, a project in which he is currently involved is proving to be a sensation, as will become apparent from what follows. Yaacov Choueka began his research career in the theory of computer science, dealing with basic questions regarding the relation between mathematical logic and automata theory. From formal languages, Yaacov moved to natural languages. He was a founder of natural-language processing in Israel, developing numerous tools for Hebrew. He is best known for his primary role, together with Aviezri Fraenkel, in the development of the Responsa Project, one of the earliest fulltext retrieval systems in the world. More recently, he has headed the Friedberg Genizah Project, which is bringing the treasures of the Cairo Genizah into the Digital Age. This second part of the three-volume set covers a range of topics related to the application of information technology in humanities, law, and narratives. The papers are grouped in topical sections on: humanities computing; narratives and their formal representation; history of ideas: the numerate disciplines; law, computer law, and legal computing.




A Socially Just Classroom: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Teaching Writing Across the Humanities


Book Description

This edited collection provides a range of transdisciplinary approaches to the teaching of writing across the Humanities through the lens of inclusion and equity in higher education. In three parts - From Disciplinary Practice to Transdisciplinary Application, The Collective We: Transparent Pedagogy in Praxis, Power in Presence: From Chalkboard to Pavement - the chapters focus on teaching triumphs and challenges, specific learning objectives and best practices, theories and their applications, and concrete examples of campus action within specific institutional or socio-historical contexts. In whole, the book represents what a socially just classroom looks like from first-year university writing classes, to advanced graduate studies, and the impact of learning beyond the university. Building on the scholarship of equity in higher education, the book forefronts transdisciplinary pedagogies with chapters representing language and literature, creative writing, cultural and ethnic studies, women and gender studies, and media studies. While we understand social justice as a multifaceted and ever expanding effort, we affirm the essential role of classroom instructors as the foundational actors in cultivating and sustaining inclusion and equity. We also acknowledge the current challenges of teaching brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, which intensifies previously existing issues surrounding housing, employment, healthcare, and the legal residency status of many students. By fostering a conversation around writing pedagogy in a comparative and transdisciplinary context, we encourage educators to translate the resources available in their fields in a collective effort to close the equity gaps. At the same time, we intend for this book to provide a context where younger faculty and diverse students can redefine the college classroom while empowering each other within their chosen institutions.




Cultural Agents Reloaded


Book Description

Cultural Agents Reloaded reflects on the accomplishments and failures of Antanas Mockus, twice Mayor of Bogotá. His example motivates us to sharpen our understanding of what cultural agency is in the present day by bringing into focus the challenges public humanities face when they travel South and struggle to become genuinely global.




Critical Approaches to the Australian Blue Humanities


Book Description

This interdisciplinary edited collection explores and analyses the field of the blue humanities through an Australian lens. The blue humanities is a way of understanding humanity’s relationship with water and manifestations of what is referred to as the ‘blue’ – reefs, oceans, rivers, creeks, basins, and inland bodies of water. In its scope, this collection emphasises both the importance of the local and the interconnectedness of Australia with global environmental concerns. It considers how we conceptualise watery spaces and shades of blue in a country where water is often marked by its absence, its ephemerality, its politicisation, and its dangers. Contributors from environmental history, environmental social science, political science, literary studies, creative arts, Indigenous Knowledge, education, and anthropology tackle various entanglements between the human, the more-than-human, and watery Australian spaces in modern culture. It is the first volume to offer a specific, dedicated focus on the intersections between Australian space and the blue humanities, and it offers a pathway for those wishing to explore, critique, and advance ideas around the blue humanities in both research and teaching. Directly contributing to a growing interdisciplinary field, this is the first book to comprehensively examine the blue in Australia, appealing to scholars, educators, and students working across the humanities and social sciences with an interest in the environmental humanities, ecopolitics, ecocriticism, the blue humanities, cultural geography, environmental history, and the role of place. Chapter 2 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.