Technology damages our sense of how to read and study as scholars. This loss (of knowing how to r... more Technology damages our sense of how to read and study as scholars. This loss (of knowing how to read and study) makes for melancholy. Melancholy is brought on as a result of not being able to find spaces of reverie in which to read and study. We need spaces of reverie in which to read and study. We need spaces of reverie so as to delve deeply into our studies and to produce and generate knowledge
The text of our manifesto will introduce posthumanism to a curriculum studies audience and propos... more The text of our manifesto will introduce posthumanism to a curriculum studies audience and propose new directions for curriculum theory and educational research more broadly. Following a description of what is variously called the “posthuman condition” or the “posthuman era,” our manifesto outlines the main theoretical features of posthumanism with particular attention to how it challenges or problematizes the nearly ubiquitous assumptions of humanism. In particular, we focus on how posthumanism responds to the history of Western humanism’s justification and encouragement of colonialism, slavery, the objectification of women, the thoughtless slaughter of non-human animals, and ecological devastation. We dwell on the question of how posthumanism may alter our understanding of the claim “education is political,” since humanism has shaped our very notions of “education” and “politics.” After outlining posthumanist discourse generally, and detailing the conceptual challenges it poses fo...
This book is a study of Otherness as experienced by Jewish intellectuals who grapple with anti-Se... more This book is a study of Otherness as experienced by Jewish intellectuals who grapple with anti-Semitism and bureaucratic chaos within the halls of academe. Jewish intellectuals need to embrace the Otherness of the dystopic university. The dystopic university is a site that founders; it is a site that is confusing and schizophrenic; the dystopic university is an institution that oppresses yet can also be somewhat freeing. Despite this schizoid atmosphere it is still possible for Jewish scholars to find “lines of flight” out (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 32). The flight out of oppression begins with study and scholarship. Through scholarship one finds emotional and intellectual freedom.
This paper is about (trans)human philosophy and curriculum studies. Here, the author argues that ... more This paper is about (trans)human philosophy and curriculum studies. Here, the author argues that a more (trans)human approach—one that includes the relations between cultural studies (here comics), (trans) gender studies and post-Husserlian phenomenology in this age of anxiety- might make us think and feel in new ways. This paper contributes to the field of curriculum studies because it puts together three subtexts that are not usually seen as bedfellows. Phenomenology is a humanist enterprise, and anything (post) is a posthuman or postmodern enterprise. Are these compatible? This paper shows that they can be--if we re-think of curriculum as hovering in between in the interstices of the human and posthuman, the modern and postmodern, the human and the transhuman. That is, humanism is still part and parcel of postanything. We are still human are we not? Or are we. Some argue that philosophy is not relevant to curriculum. Or, they ask what does philosophy have to do with curriculum? Well, philosophy is relevant because the basic questions of philosophy are also the basic questions of curriculum. Why am I alive? What is death? What does it mean to be human? What is a robot? What is AI why is it dangerous? What are computers? How is all of this inter-related? At a time when universities are getting rid of the humanities or down playing their importance, (philosophy, history, languages, literature)—this paper argues that the university curriculum must include the humanities if we are to get through this life as humans and not monsters. Sartre once said that all European humanism did was create monstrosities. Yes, that is true. But still if humanism is both critiqued it can still be a useful way to intellectually get through the world
This paper explores eco-theology, (post) humanism and what the author calls (post) human animal g... more This paper explores eco-theology, (post) humanism and what the author calls (post) human animal grace. The author explores the ways in which ecopoiesis and theopoiesis can be thought of together, as intersecting concepts. Ecopoiesis and theopoiesis are meant in more metaphoric ways, drawing on the Greek root of bringing forth, rather than on the Latin root of the poet writing poetry. (Post) human animal grace through the ecopoietic and the theopoietic together mean thinking about humans, animals, the earth, the cosmos and even machines as a web of inter-related and sacred beings. This paper draws on a wide variety of sources from Karl Rahner, to Jacques Derrida, from Wilfred Bion to Donna Haraway. This paper also draws on popular films, online gaming, popular music and even mysticism.
This paper will explore humane education, the inner worlds of nonhuman animals and animal assiste... more This paper will explore humane education, the inner worlds of nonhuman animals and animal assisted therapy. Humane education must include the study of relations between nonhuman animals and human animals. In order to understand these relations scholars must acknowledge that nonhuman animals do indeed have inner worlds. Those who engage in what is called AAT or animal assisted therapy would benefit from the study of the inner worlds of animals. The literature on the inner worlds of animals (which is called ethology) is usually separate and apart from the literature on AAT or animal assisted therapy. Scholars should consider studying these two literatures side by side so as to flesh out in depth what humane education should be. We argue in this paper that nonhuman animals are not merely co-helpers but are therapists in their own right.
Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored The Eight One: Naturalistic Intelligence... more Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored The Eight One: Naturalistic Intelligence in Multiple Intelligences Reconsidered. Book Summary: Twenty years after the publication of Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Joe L. Kincheloe and the contributing authors of Multiple Intelligences Reconsidered critique and rethink the theory in new frames of reference. Initially drawn to multiple intelligences (MI) theory because of its self-proclaimed challenge to the psychology establishment, the authors delineate their disillusionment with its evolution over the last two decades. The critiques provided here open exciting new doors to innovation in educational psychology and pedagogy, and move the fields in the direction initially promised by MI theory. Each intelligence presented by Gardner is examined and critiqued, while larger concepts in the theory are identified and assessed
In the first part of this book I examined the trope of Jewish intellectuals as a site of Othernes... more In the first part of this book I examined the trope of Jewish intellectuals as a site of Otherness. In the second part of the book I examined the experience of Otherness by studying the concept of madness. Here, in the final section of the book, I am interested in exploring the university as a site of Otherness. More specifically, I would like to raise questions around how Jewish intellectuals survive chaotic feeling states that are experienced working in what I call the dystopic university. I argue that the dystopic university is a site of strangeness, alterity, and chaos. Scholars in this post-9-11 era are at a loss as to what the purpose of the university is, or where the university is going—philosophically speaking. The dystopic university is a place where scholars do their work—yes—but it is a place of confusion and groundlessness. For Jewish intellectuals, the dystopic university is especially problematic because of the ongoing problem of being Othered—because of anti-Semitism—within academic settings. I argue that it is this very Othering and groundlessness which open spaces for Jewish intellectuals to do their work. The larger problem of the dystopic university, as I see it, is anti-intellectualism. Jewish scholars may grapple with this problem in different ways, of course. But one way to grapple with it, is to become more connected to Jewish issues in one’s scholarship.
Drawing on Pinar (1995), I suggest that thinking differently about our pedagogies begins by think... more Drawing on Pinar (1995), I suggest that thinking differently about our pedagogies begins by thinking more symbolically and metaphorically about what it means to be pedagogically Other. Autobiographical text, which is a form of symbolic representation, allows me to rethink who I am against the backdrop of my (em)placement in the South as a queer teacher. Thus, this is a story about my struggle to understand who “I” am and how I might rethink what it means to talk about pedagogical practices as the site of difference. The (un)self, in these poststructural, (post)-whatever times, webs within and between the complexities of story retelling, wandering, wondering. Teaching in the rural South, my sense of (un)self only grows more uncertain. As a queer Jewish Carpetbagger, I feel more and more schizophrenic and monstrous. I am Jewish, queer, and a Northerner through and through. To my students, I must seem alien. The notion of my (un)self has become monstrous. My (un)self is situtated against the backdrop of my student (body), my classroom filled with bodies. Who are my students? Rural Southerners. Many of them have confided in me that they are conservative, and many admit that they dream of erasing the pedagogical experience of the face-to-face, they dream of online courses, wishing our presences absent. They wish that they did not have to face me, perhaps they do not want to look at me, or face what they see, or face what they see within themselves. Ah, the d-generation: Digital.com
David Hare's (2006) Broadway play, The Vertical Hour turns on this: In combat medicine, there... more David Hare's (2006) Broadway play, The Vertical Hour turns on this: In combat medicine, there's this moment ... after a disaster, after a shooting--there's this moment, the vertical hour, when you can actually be of some use. (qtd., David Finkle, 2006) The play is astonishing in complexity. Interestingly enough, the first scene opens with Julianne Moore (playing Nadia Blye) as a professor at Yale discussing with one of her students his poorly written paper. We all know how uncomfortable that can be! But is it? She complains that the student's paper is driven by emotion, not reason. The paper sounds as if it is about the writer, not about the subject. The student confesses that his paper was not driven by political science, but by love. How many of our students write papers driven by love and not by the subject at hand? Or, how many of our students' papers are driven by some other emotion, say, anger, or hatred or jealousy or envy? Is this wrong? Or is it the way ...
Georgia Southern University faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Michel Serres Bugs the Curric... more Georgia Southern University faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Michel Serres Bugs the Curriculum in (Post) Modern Science (Education): Propositions and Alternative Paths. Book Summary: These original essays offer new perspectives for science educators, curriculum theorists, and cultural critics on science education, French post-structural thought, and the science debates. Included in this book are chapters on the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, and Jean Baudrillard, plus chapters on postmodern approaches to science education and critiques of modern scientific assumptions in curriculum development
Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Chronicles and Canticles as Science Fict... more Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Chronicles and Canticles as Science Fiction Text in Science Fiction Curriculum, Cyborg Teachers and Youth Culture(s). Book Summary: Science Fiction Curriculum, Cyborg Teachers, and Youth Culture(s) is a collection of essays sutured together by their use of science fiction as a departure from contemporary educational «realities». The authors, inspired by the visions, styles, and insights of various science fiction texts, films, and rap music, seek to transform the future of educational possibilities. Science Fiction Curriculum offers alternative paths to current regressive educational practices, policies, and reforms, and invites readers to venture into uncharted dimensions
Technology damages our sense of how to read and study as scholars. This loss (of knowing how to r... more Technology damages our sense of how to read and study as scholars. This loss (of knowing how to read and study) makes for melancholy. Melancholy is brought on as a result of not being able to find spaces of reverie in which to read and study. We need spaces of reverie in which to read and study. We need spaces of reverie so as to delve deeply into our studies and to produce and generate knowledge
The text of our manifesto will introduce posthumanism to a curriculum studies audience and propos... more The text of our manifesto will introduce posthumanism to a curriculum studies audience and propose new directions for curriculum theory and educational research more broadly. Following a description of what is variously called the “posthuman condition” or the “posthuman era,” our manifesto outlines the main theoretical features of posthumanism with particular attention to how it challenges or problematizes the nearly ubiquitous assumptions of humanism. In particular, we focus on how posthumanism responds to the history of Western humanism’s justification and encouragement of colonialism, slavery, the objectification of women, the thoughtless slaughter of non-human animals, and ecological devastation. We dwell on the question of how posthumanism may alter our understanding of the claim “education is political,” since humanism has shaped our very notions of “education” and “politics.” After outlining posthumanist discourse generally, and detailing the conceptual challenges it poses fo...
This book is a study of Otherness as experienced by Jewish intellectuals who grapple with anti-Se... more This book is a study of Otherness as experienced by Jewish intellectuals who grapple with anti-Semitism and bureaucratic chaos within the halls of academe. Jewish intellectuals need to embrace the Otherness of the dystopic university. The dystopic university is a site that founders; it is a site that is confusing and schizophrenic; the dystopic university is an institution that oppresses yet can also be somewhat freeing. Despite this schizoid atmosphere it is still possible for Jewish scholars to find “lines of flight” out (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 32). The flight out of oppression begins with study and scholarship. Through scholarship one finds emotional and intellectual freedom.
This paper is about (trans)human philosophy and curriculum studies. Here, the author argues that ... more This paper is about (trans)human philosophy and curriculum studies. Here, the author argues that a more (trans)human approach—one that includes the relations between cultural studies (here comics), (trans) gender studies and post-Husserlian phenomenology in this age of anxiety- might make us think and feel in new ways. This paper contributes to the field of curriculum studies because it puts together three subtexts that are not usually seen as bedfellows. Phenomenology is a humanist enterprise, and anything (post) is a posthuman or postmodern enterprise. Are these compatible? This paper shows that they can be--if we re-think of curriculum as hovering in between in the interstices of the human and posthuman, the modern and postmodern, the human and the transhuman. That is, humanism is still part and parcel of postanything. We are still human are we not? Or are we. Some argue that philosophy is not relevant to curriculum. Or, they ask what does philosophy have to do with curriculum? Well, philosophy is relevant because the basic questions of philosophy are also the basic questions of curriculum. Why am I alive? What is death? What does it mean to be human? What is a robot? What is AI why is it dangerous? What are computers? How is all of this inter-related? At a time when universities are getting rid of the humanities or down playing their importance, (philosophy, history, languages, literature)—this paper argues that the university curriculum must include the humanities if we are to get through this life as humans and not monsters. Sartre once said that all European humanism did was create monstrosities. Yes, that is true. But still if humanism is both critiqued it can still be a useful way to intellectually get through the world
This paper explores eco-theology, (post) humanism and what the author calls (post) human animal g... more This paper explores eco-theology, (post) humanism and what the author calls (post) human animal grace. The author explores the ways in which ecopoiesis and theopoiesis can be thought of together, as intersecting concepts. Ecopoiesis and theopoiesis are meant in more metaphoric ways, drawing on the Greek root of bringing forth, rather than on the Latin root of the poet writing poetry. (Post) human animal grace through the ecopoietic and the theopoietic together mean thinking about humans, animals, the earth, the cosmos and even machines as a web of inter-related and sacred beings. This paper draws on a wide variety of sources from Karl Rahner, to Jacques Derrida, from Wilfred Bion to Donna Haraway. This paper also draws on popular films, online gaming, popular music and even mysticism.
This paper will explore humane education, the inner worlds of nonhuman animals and animal assiste... more This paper will explore humane education, the inner worlds of nonhuman animals and animal assisted therapy. Humane education must include the study of relations between nonhuman animals and human animals. In order to understand these relations scholars must acknowledge that nonhuman animals do indeed have inner worlds. Those who engage in what is called AAT or animal assisted therapy would benefit from the study of the inner worlds of animals. The literature on the inner worlds of animals (which is called ethology) is usually separate and apart from the literature on AAT or animal assisted therapy. Scholars should consider studying these two literatures side by side so as to flesh out in depth what humane education should be. We argue in this paper that nonhuman animals are not merely co-helpers but are therapists in their own right.
Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored The Eight One: Naturalistic Intelligence... more Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored The Eight One: Naturalistic Intelligence in Multiple Intelligences Reconsidered. Book Summary: Twenty years after the publication of Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Joe L. Kincheloe and the contributing authors of Multiple Intelligences Reconsidered critique and rethink the theory in new frames of reference. Initially drawn to multiple intelligences (MI) theory because of its self-proclaimed challenge to the psychology establishment, the authors delineate their disillusionment with its evolution over the last two decades. The critiques provided here open exciting new doors to innovation in educational psychology and pedagogy, and move the fields in the direction initially promised by MI theory. Each intelligence presented by Gardner is examined and critiqued, while larger concepts in the theory are identified and assessed
In the first part of this book I examined the trope of Jewish intellectuals as a site of Othernes... more In the first part of this book I examined the trope of Jewish intellectuals as a site of Otherness. In the second part of the book I examined the experience of Otherness by studying the concept of madness. Here, in the final section of the book, I am interested in exploring the university as a site of Otherness. More specifically, I would like to raise questions around how Jewish intellectuals survive chaotic feeling states that are experienced working in what I call the dystopic university. I argue that the dystopic university is a site of strangeness, alterity, and chaos. Scholars in this post-9-11 era are at a loss as to what the purpose of the university is, or where the university is going—philosophically speaking. The dystopic university is a place where scholars do their work—yes—but it is a place of confusion and groundlessness. For Jewish intellectuals, the dystopic university is especially problematic because of the ongoing problem of being Othered—because of anti-Semitism—within academic settings. I argue that it is this very Othering and groundlessness which open spaces for Jewish intellectuals to do their work. The larger problem of the dystopic university, as I see it, is anti-intellectualism. Jewish scholars may grapple with this problem in different ways, of course. But one way to grapple with it, is to become more connected to Jewish issues in one’s scholarship.
Drawing on Pinar (1995), I suggest that thinking differently about our pedagogies begins by think... more Drawing on Pinar (1995), I suggest that thinking differently about our pedagogies begins by thinking more symbolically and metaphorically about what it means to be pedagogically Other. Autobiographical text, which is a form of symbolic representation, allows me to rethink who I am against the backdrop of my (em)placement in the South as a queer teacher. Thus, this is a story about my struggle to understand who “I” am and how I might rethink what it means to talk about pedagogical practices as the site of difference. The (un)self, in these poststructural, (post)-whatever times, webs within and between the complexities of story retelling, wandering, wondering. Teaching in the rural South, my sense of (un)self only grows more uncertain. As a queer Jewish Carpetbagger, I feel more and more schizophrenic and monstrous. I am Jewish, queer, and a Northerner through and through. To my students, I must seem alien. The notion of my (un)self has become monstrous. My (un)self is situtated against the backdrop of my student (body), my classroom filled with bodies. Who are my students? Rural Southerners. Many of them have confided in me that they are conservative, and many admit that they dream of erasing the pedagogical experience of the face-to-face, they dream of online courses, wishing our presences absent. They wish that they did not have to face me, perhaps they do not want to look at me, or face what they see, or face what they see within themselves. Ah, the d-generation: Digital.com
David Hare's (2006) Broadway play, The Vertical Hour turns on this: In combat medicine, there... more David Hare's (2006) Broadway play, The Vertical Hour turns on this: In combat medicine, there's this moment ... after a disaster, after a shooting--there's this moment, the vertical hour, when you can actually be of some use. (qtd., David Finkle, 2006) The play is astonishing in complexity. Interestingly enough, the first scene opens with Julianne Moore (playing Nadia Blye) as a professor at Yale discussing with one of her students his poorly written paper. We all know how uncomfortable that can be! But is it? She complains that the student's paper is driven by emotion, not reason. The paper sounds as if it is about the writer, not about the subject. The student confesses that his paper was not driven by political science, but by love. How many of our students write papers driven by love and not by the subject at hand? Or, how many of our students' papers are driven by some other emotion, say, anger, or hatred or jealousy or envy? Is this wrong? Or is it the way ...
Georgia Southern University faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Michel Serres Bugs the Curric... more Georgia Southern University faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Michel Serres Bugs the Curriculum in (Post) Modern Science (Education): Propositions and Alternative Paths. Book Summary: These original essays offer new perspectives for science educators, curriculum theorists, and cultural critics on science education, French post-structural thought, and the science debates. Included in this book are chapters on the work of Bruno Latour, Michel Serres, and Jean Baudrillard, plus chapters on postmodern approaches to science education and critiques of modern scientific assumptions in curriculum development
Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Chronicles and Canticles as Science Fict... more Georgia Southern faculty member Marla B. Morris authored Chronicles and Canticles as Science Fiction Text in Science Fiction Curriculum, Cyborg Teachers and Youth Culture(s). Book Summary: Science Fiction Curriculum, Cyborg Teachers, and Youth Culture(s) is a collection of essays sutured together by their use of science fiction as a departure from contemporary educational «realities». The authors, inspired by the visions, styles, and insights of various science fiction texts, films, and rap music, seek to transform the future of educational possibilities. Science Fiction Curriculum offers alternative paths to current regressive educational practices, policies, and reforms, and invites readers to venture into uncharted dimensions
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