A key aspect of the educator's responsibility as understood by Hannah Arendt is its dual character. Educators are responsible for both the life and development of the child and the continuance of the world, as Arendt puts it in "The Crisis in Education." Moreover, these aspects of responsibility are in tension with each other. Arendt's…

This is a conceptual paper that explores critiquing picturebooks set in Africa. The paper is grounded in BlackCrit (Black Critical Theory) and Racial and Ethnic Socialization (RES). Using pragmatism as a method, we offer a detailed analysis of 3 carefully selected books, on the broad basis of authenticity, accuracy, and respectfulness. A deeper…

Narrative in a United States survey course is hard to avoid. The question that the author has confronted in his classes is simple: do narratives still work in the surveys now that students understand their subjectivity, in many cases, as much as their teachers? Students, like most humans, tend to like stories. As the humanities at large and…

Critics have commented on the power of writing--the biblical Word as creation--in Bernardo Carvalho's work. It forges connections through words between others who are out of place, searching for order in what appears to be chaos. However, this motif from both Genesis and the New Testament is also mediated by another creation narrative: the Big…

Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of…

Author Toni Morrison used fictional narratives to make readers uncomfortably aware of their collective role in perpetuating the culture of poverty and pitying its victims. In her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," she focused on the most vulnerable member of society -- a child -- to depict the consequences of extreme social isolation and…

The term "freethinking" originated in the 17th century to describe inquiry into beliefs which were accepted unquestioningly. Feminists such as Mary Wolstonecraft, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, and novelists such as Mark Twain and Zora Neal Hurston are among the many who dared to simultaneously challenge religious dogma,…

One of the most critical problems of the Linguistics of text is the structure study of the literary text, principles of its organization following the rules of the compositions that suggest splitting the linguistic work into the interconnected parts. In this regard, it is necessary to research the individual compositional and significant elements…

I discuss a published paper in political science that made a claim that aroused skepticism. The reanalysis is an example of how we, as consumers as well as producers of science, can engage with published work. This can be viewed as a sort of collaboration performed implicitly between the authors of a published paper and later researchers who want…

Deconstruction, as a critical theory, maintains that language is a system of signs and, more precisely, a system of oppositions, differences and contradictions. Accordingly, the theory is operative in the sense that meanings are ultimately, unstable, and that a text, any text, contradicts, dismantles and even destroys itself. Hence, literary texts…

Of all disciplines, literary studies has the most entrenched model of academic authorship -- the sole author -- yet the discipline rarely reflects critically on the implications of this model. This article offers a starting point by reporting on a study designed to analyse recent co-authorship trends within literary studies. It provides the…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to draw reader's attention to the author-space relationship in order to fulfill the theoretical deficiency in terms of space-psychoanalysis in the light of qualitative data. Methods: Qualitative data analysis has been thought to be the best way to deal with the space-psychoanalysis relationship through…

Critically analyzing the representation of pedagogy in the novels of J.M. Coetzee, this insightful text illustrates the author's profound conception of learning and personal development as something which takes place well beyond formal education. Bringing together critical and educational theory, "Pedagogy in the Novels of J.M. Coetzee"…

Help students to explore the intertextuality of literature and to think more deeply and compassionately about the world. This book shows high school teachers and college instructors how to foreground a work's cultural context, recognizing that every culture has its own narrative tradition of oral and written classics that inform its literature.…

This paper studies how Emerson's 'Self-Reliance' offers a meaningful account of political and moral self-education in Western democracies. Emerson's moral perfectionism involves an ethical, political and democratic individualism that needs to be reconsidered. This paper explores a perfectionist interpretation of the modern forms of self-education…