Within the arts there is a growing ethical consciousness, both in the way it relates to the larger social, political and economic challenges and in the way it reflects on its own production and distribution mechanisms. This book attempts to describe how artistic imagination can produce new situations, based on the potentials and limits of the individual 'body' within its environment. The first section, Ecosophy, focuses on eco-art practices and how the ethical turn in the arts implies a greater receptivity for the environment we live in. The second section, Caring for the Body, focuses more on dance and the renewed interest in 'the body', both on the level of the individual and on that of the larger 'body politic' of cooperation and collaboration.
Why does a public high school, despite having resources and educators with good intentions, end up graduating English learners (ELs) without preparing them for college and career? This book answers this question through a longitudinal ethnographic case study of a diverse high school in Pennsylvania. The author takes the reader on a journey with seven EL students through their last two years of high school, exploring how and why none of them reached the postsecondary destinations they originally aspired to. This book provides a sobering look into the systemic undereducation of high school ELs and the role of high schools in limiting their postsecondary options.
In this inventive mix of criticism, scholarship, and personal reflection, Carrie J. Preston explores the nature of cross-cultural teaching, learning, and performance. Throughout the twentieth century, Japanese noh was a major creative catalyst for American and European writers, dancers, and composers. The noh theater's stylized choreography, poetic chant, spectacular costumes and masks, and engagement with history inspired Western artists as they reimagined new approaches to tradition and form. In Learning to Kneel, Preston locates noh's important influence on such canonical figures as Pound, Yeats, Brecht, Britten, and Beckett. These writers learned about noh from an international cast of collaborators, and Preston traces the ways in which Japanese and Western artists influenced one another. Preston's critical work was profoundly shaped by her own training in noh performance technique under a professional actor in Tokyo, who taught her to kneel, bow, chant, and submit to the teachings of a conservative tradition. This encounter challenged Preston's assumptions about effective teaching, particularly her inclinations to emphasize Western ideas of innovation and subversion and to overlook the complex ranges of agency experienced by teachers and students. It also inspired new perspectives regarding the generative relationship between Western writers and Japanese performers. Pound, Yeats, Brecht, and others are often criticized for their orientalist tendencies and misappropriation of noh, but Preston's analysis and her journey reflect a more nuanced understanding of cultural exchange.
F. LOWENTHAL University of Mons Mons, Belgium In September 1980, researchers from many different countries and working in disciplines as varied as philosophy, psychology, neurology, mathematics, education, linguistics, sociology, and others we forget to mention, again met in Mons to discuss problems concerning Language and Language Acquisition. Conflicting opinions among researchers not only from different disciplines, but also within a same discipline, led to many a lively discussion. This book attempts to recreate the atmosphere of the conference, by reproducing the different papers, some of which were rewritten after the initial presentation and discussion-session, and by giving a summary of each discussion session to enable the reader to understand how each participant reacted. Obviously, we accept full responsibility for these summaries: we hope we have understood correctly what each participant meant. This also holds for the special session devoted to an attempt to define the concept of "language". We suggest that further meetings should study language and context simultaneously, within the framework of a "CONTEXTUAL LINGUISTICS".
As Lee shows in Overwhelmed, the rapid expansion of print created new relationships between literature and information. He presents a new argument: rather than being at odds, as generations of critics have viewed them, literature and information in the 19th century were entangled in surprisingly collaborative ways.
An NPR Favorite Book of the Year “Breaks new ground on social and educational questions of great import.” —Washington Post “An essential work, humane and candid, that challenges and expands our understanding of the lives of contemporary college students.” —Paul Tough, author of Helping Children Succeed “Eye-opening...Brings home the pain and reality of on-campus poverty and puts the blame squarely on elite institutions.” —Washington Post “Jack’s investigation redirects attention from the matter of access to the matter of inclusion...His book challenges universities to support the diversity they indulge in advertising.” —New Yorker The Ivy League looks different than it used to. College presidents and deans of admission have opened their doors—and their coffers—to support a more diverse student body. But is it enough just to admit these students? In this bracing exposé, Anthony Jack shows that many students’ struggles continue long after they’ve settled in their dorms. Admission, they quickly learn, is not the same as acceptance. This powerfully argued book documents how university policies and campus culture can exacerbate preexisting inequalities and reveals why some students are harder hit than others.
This volume examines the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in education in Europe. Following the implementation of the Bologna process, English has assumed a central role in European education offering institutions the opportunity to cater to the needs of an internationalized student body and increase their competitiveness. On the other hand, the increased use of ELF has become an issue of concern, often perceived as a threat to other languages, tilting the scale towards linguistic inequality and stressing the urgent need for the development of new language policies. Both aspects of ELF are at the center of discussion in the proposed volume, which consists of a variety of papers examining ELF in different parts of Europe (Eastern, Central and Western) and different levels of education. The volume makes a substantial contribution to the lively and controversial debate about what is recognized as a central topical concern of language education policy in Europe and beyond.
