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Howard Sklar

Bio: Howard Sklar is an academic researcher from University of Helsinki. The author has contributed to research in topics: Narrative & Sympathy. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 13 publications receiving 99 citations.
Topics: Narrative, Sympathy, Empathy, Persuasion, Narratology

Papers
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Book
13 Mar 2013
TL;DR: Sympathy and narrative: Theoretical assumptions, experiential and ethical dimensions, and forms of persuasion: Narrative approaches to the construction of reader sympathy are discussed in this paper.
Abstract: 2 Acknowledgments 3 Introduction 4 Part I Sympathy and narrative: Theoretical assumptions 5 1 Believable fictions: On the nature of emotional responses to fictional characters 6 2 Defining sympathy: Experiential and ethical dimensions 7 3 Forms of persuasion: Narrative approaches to the construction of reader sympathy 8 Part II Literary critical and empirical case studies 9 4 Varieties of narrative sympathy: Two preliminary case studies 10 5 Shades of sympathy: The limits and possibilities of identification in Bambara's "The Hammer Man" 11 6 Sympathetic "grotesque": The dynamics of feeling in Sherwood Anderson's "Hands" 12 Part III Sympathy in the classroom 13 7 Narrative as experience: The pedagogical implications of sympathizing with fictional characters 14 8 Conclusion 15 References 16 Index

34 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examined the role played by sympathy in response to disabled characters in fiction, as is emphasized by an examination of Toni Morrison's short story "Recitatif" and found that the narrative's dependence on the implicitly disabled character Maggie for its effects suggests that she serves a "prosthetic" role in the development of the protagonists' and readers' sympathy.
Abstract: The article shows that, while the "no pity" position justifiably opposes representations of the disabled that reinforce the perceived weaknesses of the disabled population, there are alternative ways of looking at the role played by sympathy in response to disabled characters in fiction, as is emphasized by an examination of Toni Morrison's short story "Recitatif." While the narrative's dependence on the implicitly disabled character Maggie for its effects suggests that she serves a "prosthetic" role in the development of the protagonists' (and readers') sympathy, the article argues that "Recitatif" makes a significant move in guiding readers toward a more complex view of Maggie's identity, as well as a level of sympathetic engagement that effectively transcends her apparently prosthetic function. Thus, it is demonstrated that a rigid rejection of sympathetic responses to disabled characters denies readers an important opportunity to develop "a cultivated imagination for what men have in common and a rebe...

14 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how narrative experience can help form the basis for a problem-solving, emotionally-rich curriculum that takes as its primary aim the development of students' capacities for emotional awareness and ethical reflection.
Abstract: Last year, guided by theories that regard sympathy as an imaginative capacity that can bridge divisions between people of different backgrounds, I conducted an experiment with nearly 200 Finnish secondary school students, in order to determine the extent to which particular texts would generate their sympathy for characters who seem unattractive, undesirable, or generally outside of the accepted norms of the societies in which they live. The present paper builds on my findings in that study by suggesting some of the pedagogical implications of providing adolescents with opportunities to engage with the lives of fictional characters, and particularly to experience feelings of sympathy for individuals toward whom they ordinarily might feel aversion or uncertainty. It examines some of the ways in which experiences with narrative fiction can be used to help develop emotional and conceptual structures in adolescent readers. In Education and Experience John Dewey contends that “the conditions found in present experience should be used as sources of problems”; indeed, the present paper shows how narrative experience can help form the basis for a problem-solving, emotionally-rich curriculum that takes as its primary aim the development of students’ capacities for emotional awareness and ethical reflection.

14 citations


Cited by
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Book
01 Jan 2012
Abstract: Experience and Educationis the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education(Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas as a result of his intervening experience with the progressive schools and in the light of the criticisms his theories had received. Analysing both "traditional" and "progressive" education, Dr. Dewey here insists that neither the old nor the new education is adequate and that each is miseducative because neither of them applies the principles of a carefully developed philosophy of experience. Many pages of this volume illustrate Dr. Dewey's ideas for a philosophy of experience and its relation to education. He particularly urges that all teachers and educators looking for a new movement in education should think in terms of the deeped and larger issues of education rather than in terms of some divisive "ism" about education, even such an "ism" as "progressivism." His philosophy, here expressed in its most essential, most readable form, predicates an American educational system that respects all sources of experience, on that offers a true learning situation that is both historical and social, both orderly and dynamic.

10,294 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Booth argues that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners as mentioned in this paper. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality.
Abstract: In \"The Company We Keep\", Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of this particular encounter with this particular work. Yet it will give up the old hope for definitive judgments of 'good' work and 'bad'. Rather it will be a conversation about many kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us as we read? Who am I, during the hours of reading or listening? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends? Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: 'friendship with books', 'the exchange of gifts', 'the colonizing of worlds', 'the constitution of commonwealths'. He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain.

446 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Morrison as mentioned in this paper argues that race has become a metaphor, a way of referring to forces, events, and forms of social decay, economic division, and human panic, and argues that individualism, masculinity, the insistence upon innocence coupled to an obsession with figurations of death and hell are responses to a dark and abiding Africanist presence.
Abstract: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison provides a personal inquiry into the significance of African-American literary imagination. Her goal, she states at the outset, is to \"put forth an argument for extending the study of American literature\". Author of \"Beloved\", \"The Bluest Eye\", \"Song of Solomon\", and other vivid portrayals of black American experience, Morrison ponders the effect that living in a historically racialized society has had on American writing in the 19th and 20th centuries. She argues that race has become a metaphor, a way of referring to forces, events, and forms of social decay, economic division, and human panic. Her argument is that the central characteristics of American literature - individualism, masculinity, the insistence upon innocence coupled to an obsession with figurations of death and hell - are responses to a dark and abiding Africanist presence.

244 citations