Showing papers on "Wonder published in 1996"

The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them

Abstract: s I sit here writing about anti-intellectualism in American education, a debate is raging in my state, Virginia, over a proposal to "raise standards of learning" by mandating knowledge standards for each grade. The factual knowledge that is specified in the Virginia draft is far more explicit than in any currently existing state guidelines. But prospects for approval in any but watered-down form are dim. According to the Washington Post (March 29, 1995), the draft guidelines "have provoked scathing criticism from teachers' groups, superintendents, parent organizations, education professors, and legislators, both Republican and Democrat. Some say the goals are unrealistically ambitious for the lower grades, [and] promote rote memorization over critical thinking." (Now, at a later date, as I revise this text, I can report that a watered-down compromise was reached.) That American professors of education are more hostile to the teaching of factual knowledge than education professors elsewhere in the world offers another point of entry into the American educational Thoughtworld. But, as the report from the Washington Post indicates, it is not just education profes sors who express hostility to "rote memorization." That attitude also rallies Republicans and Democrats, parents and legislators, and, as I infer from the tenor of the Post article, newspaper reporters as well. There is widespread antiknowledge sentiment in American thought that Richard Hofstadter has labeled "anti-intellectualism." 1 It is a convenient term, but I wonder whether Hofstadter's definition of it[107] does adequate justice to its attractions for a wide spectrum of Americans. Hofstadter defines anti-intellectualism as contempt for "knowledge for its own sake." This definition perhaps misses something essential, namely, that the knowledge most often scorned by Americans tends to be academic knowledge connected with scientific lore and past traditions—the kind taught in lecture halls and recorded mostly in books. Disinterested curiosity is not in itself scorned by Americans— only disinterested curiosity about the contents of lec tures and books. Of course, Hofstadter is right that interested, as distinct from disinterested, practicality is a persistent American trait. We are fondest of knowledge that has utility for economic and moral improvement, a preference I happen to share. Befitting our early image of ourselves as giving mankind a new, Edenic start in history, Americans have valued knowledge that comes directly from experience more than knowledge that comes from books. "Critical thinking" about one's own direct experience is to be preferred to "rote memorization" of the writings of others. Huck Finn is an archetypal American antibook fig ure. He is going to get his education by critically thinking about what he discovers on the river and in the Territory. Nature and experience will be his teachers. Huck's attitudes are not very different from those of Walt Whitman:

Medicine, postmodernism, and the end of certainty

Abstract: “The Enlightenment is dead, Marxism is dead, the working class movement is dead and the author does not feel very well either.”1 I came across a curious word the other day—credicide. The death of belief. Not this or that one but all and every. Strictly speaking, of course, it means the active killing of belief rather than just its simple demise. Some dark agent has been out mugging belief in the night, jumping it, slicing it up while our eyes were turned to see what the arc lights of the media were bringing us this time. What is dying of course is not just Progress, Education, Science, Justice, or God—though all these do look anaemic shadows of their former selves. What is dying is the House of Belief itself. Down in the basement the machines are getting too cocky by half. The foundations are changing from carbon to silicon. Upstairs, uneasily aware that the world is changing in ways too deep to fathom, we race the newest technological wonder, work out in the gym, sniff encephalins, or tune into the latest version of reality. And deep in our hearts we suspect that it can only be a matter of time before the House of …

Gendering the Vertical Mosaic: Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Society

Abstract: I write this review of a book clearly designed for the university market, be it women's studies, sociology, or political science courses, while I compose at the same time a talk to CEOs of large corporations here in Calgary. An interesting experience, this moving back and forth in my mind between audiences. I think about what people hear, about their expectations, about contexts, about my own motivations in talking in public arenas. Am I right in thinking that my talk to the CEOs shouldn't be laden with fine theoretical distinctions? Am I right to believe that, there, stories of experience in the world of universities and institutions including feminist organizations will make a more forceful presentation of feminist issues? In the meanwhile, I think about how useful we will find this book in women's studies courses and other settings in which we want to expose the complexity of feminist positions on many subjects. Feminists and the Canadian state, and feminists challenging the state; resistance and power; power and powerlessness; feminism, women, and work; representation and subjectivity -- all these receive a history, a Canadian context, and a glimpse through the prisms of different theoretical positions. These latter are no surprise, including the usual liberal feminism, socialist, Marxist, radical, and anti-racist feminism, as well as some discussion of discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, and post-structuralism. Nothing wrong with that (although I wonder here whether the CEOs would understand the distinctions; indeed whether they are as great as they have been claimed to be by their proponents), especially when each of them is offered both respectfully and at its best in each case, Hamilton always remembering that different understandings from varied theoretical perspectives all provide ways of thinking about how to create social and political change. Hamilton cites Bronwen Wallace in the preface, calling on us to be mindful of our wholeness, and thus mindful of the politics of the particular. As the book examines Canadian society from feminist perspectives, it abides by its commitment to the particular, interrogating both concepts, Canadian society and feminist perspectives. True in the end to her teacher, sociologist John Porter (author of The Vertical Mosaic), Hamilton agrees that dismantling the vertical mosaic requires equality of opportunity, especially provided through education, with its precondition a reasonable standard of living. Since meanness prevails now everywhere in the country, feminists have resistance to offer, resistance to misogynistic and racist arguments that buttress privilege and power, in turn buttressed by "androcentric knowledge." The tools for that resistance lie in education fortified by the particular. …

Shakespeare and the theatre of wonder

Abstract: Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction 1. Theory of wonder theatre of wonder 2. Vision and vocation in the theatre of God 3. Compounding 'Errors' 4. Pericles or, the past as fate and miracle 5. The Winter's Tale or, filling up the graves Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

The Rhetoric of Globalization: What's in a Wor(l)d?:

Abstract: In their introduction to Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh attempt to discern the meaning of that over-used buzzword, globalization. 'We are all participants in one way or another in an unprecedented political and economic happening, but we cannot make sense of it. We know that we are supposed to think globally, but it is hard to wrap the mind even around a city block, much less a planet. No wonder we are at the mercy of buzzwords and sound bites. "Globalization" is the most fashionable word of the 1990s, so portentous and wonderfully patient as to puzzle Alice in Wonderland and thrill the Red Queen because it means precisely whatever the user says it means.'1 Barnet and Cavanagh, of course, are not wrong. Over the past decade and a half, students of international relations have been trying to come to grips with the myriad international economic and political changes which appear to characterize globalization, finding that there are perhaps as many meanings as there are analysts. Wading into the field, therefore, is an inherently risky proposition made riskier still by the attempt to draw conclusions about globalization as a political and social phenomenon rather than as merely a series of economic processes. As Francois Chesnais has argued, however, globalization is not a neutral concept; it has been used by its apol-

Regard, Respect, and Responsibility: Sketches for a Moral Geography of the Everyday

Abstract: The patterns of our everyday interactions reflect basic currents in Western culture and describe our values about each other, our world, and our future. The frame within which our interactions take place and the expressions of this frame on the landscape portray the nature of our regard, respect, and responsibility for each other, our environment, and those who will succeed us. Time and space are increasingly disregarded as they are segmented and the here and now is privileged over other places and other times. In the process, we are disconnected from and devalue the world. Rationalization as method and efficiency as goal have been transferred from analysis of the physical world to prescription for the social world. This has led to strength of belief as the basis for validating one's actions and has, in turn, increased everyday disrespect for those with other beliefs or who are associated with groups whose members might hold other beliefs. Secularization has led to a loss of wonder at the immater...

Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context

Abstract: Preface 1. Is science enough? 2. Understanding the physical world 3. Working together 4. Memoirs of the great 5. What happened to the human mind? 6. What does it mean? 7. Ultimate questions 8. Is, ought and wonder 9. Responsible behaviour Index.

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder

Abstract: Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder. Lawrence Weschler. New York: Pantheon Books, 1995.176 pp. b/w and color illus., $21.00 (cloth).

Mind, meaning, and practice

Abstract: In one of his harshest judgments on philosophy Wittgenstein observes at PI, 194: “When we do philosophy we are like savages, primitive people, who hear the expressions of civilized men, put a false interpretation on them, and then draw the queerest conclusions from it.” He does not document the extent to which this actually goes on in philosophy, or where it goes on, if it does. When he makes the remark he has been discussing possibility. In that case perhaps he has a point. It might well apply as well to much of what is said in philosophy about thought, meaning, and understanding - in short, about the mind. When we reflect philosophically on those “mental” or “intentional” ways of speaking in which we describe so much of what we do it is easy to start down a path, no one step of which is exactly “savage” or “uncivilized,” but which ends up with something “queer” in the sense of being completely and irretrievably mysterious. I want to look at one - but only one - way in which Wittgenstein thinks this happens, and what he does, or suggests, to counteract it. It can start with puzzlement over the meanings of words. Not with wondering what some particular word means, but with wonder at the very phenomenon of meaning. Words as we encounter them are sounds or marks, but obviously not all sounds or marks are meaningful. Leaves make sounds in the wind, and a snail makes marks in the sand. It is not even their being produced by human beings that makes sounds or marks meaningful. Humans also produce sounds and marks which have no meaning, and often do so intentionally. As Wittgenstein puts it, mere sounds or marks on their own seem “dead” (BLBK, p. 3).

Literature and the Political Imagination

Abstract: Preface Contributors 1. Literature, Philosophy and Political Theory 2. Taking the Narrative Turn: What the Novel has to offer Political Theory 3. 'What of Soul was left I wonder?' The Narrative Self in Political Philosophy 4. Life, Literature and Ethical Theory: Martha Nussbaum on the Role of the Literary Imagination in Ethical Thought 5. Modes of Political Imagining 6. Literature and Moral Choice 7. The Aloofness of Liberal Politics: Can Imaginative Literature furnish a private space? 8. 'Breathes there the man with soul so dead ... '. Reflections on Patriotic Poetry and Liberal Principles 9. The Idea of a National Literature 10. The Anti-Imperialism of George Orwell 11. Contemporary Feminist Utopianism: Practising Utopia on Utopia

The face of wonder

Abstract: An exploration into the phenomenology of existential wonder invites reflection upon life, self and other. Wonder suspends our habitual views of things, revealing them in a ‘new light’, and as a consequence, propels us into, and establishes anew, our relations with the world/other. Moreover, by bringing us to a conceptual ‘stand‐still’ wonder exposes our vulnerability, thereby putting into question the nature of identity. Attentiveness to wonder, and to the many dimensions of experience it reveals in our lives, can cultivate a sensitivity to the emergence of wonder in others, and therefore, has significant implications for the way in which we can be pedagogically oriented towards students. Rather than see a child's question as something that needs a quick and simple answer, the adult should try to help in his or her natural inclination to live the question. I wonder why the sun is so hot? I wonder how the earth was made? I wonder where I came from? I wonder why the leaves turn colour and fall off trees? Ea...

On Demoralization and Awe in Psychotherapy Supervision

Abstract: In this paper, two important, cross-theoretical tasks of the clinical supervisor are considered: Combating demoralization and stimulating wonder, awe, and curiosity in psychotherapy supervisees. Those tasks are defined, and some attention is given to how they can be implemented in psychotherapy supervision.

Narrative History as a Way of Life

Abstract: Hayden White writes: 'Historians have systematically built into their notion of their discipline hostility or at least a blindness to theory and the kind of issues that philosophers have raised about the kind of knowledge they have produced.' His explanation for this blindness seems to be in terms of a set of personal failings shared by historians: their simplistic assertion that only empirical research really matters; their mistaken belief that understanding what historians do is a matter of practical knowledge available only to fellow professionals; their inability to theorize their own discourse and the suppression of the philosophical dimensions of their craft and discipline. Such attitudes are indeed widespread among historians. But I want to suggest a much more profound reason for the antitheoretical tradition in history: most historians feel no need for a self-conscious, separate and distinct theoretical analysis of their discipline because the dominant discourse of knowledge in history is coterminous with the common sense discourse of modern everyday life. As John Passmore has argued: 'For the most part . . . there is nothing much to say about historical explanation; nothing that cannot be said about explanation in everyday life .... No wonder historians are often puzzled to know what philosophers are fussing about!'2 'Narrative' historians like myself, and most other historians,3 work mainly within the framework of a human action account of the past.4 History is viewed as a field of human action and action as the result of individual and collective reasoning in particular circumstances under the impact of a variety of social, political, economic, ideological and cultural influences (themselves contexts of action composed of and created by other human agents). The task of historians is to reconstruct the reasons for past actions. They do this by reference to surviving

Further beyond the society/nature divide: A comment on Freudenburg, Frickel, and Gramling

Abstract: In 'Beyond the Society/Nature Divide,' William Freudenburg, Scott Frickel, and Robert Gramling (1995) attack dualist thinking in sociology. They want to get beyond the style of thought that makes a clean split between nature and society and then allots explanatory priority to one side or the other. They even want to get beyond an eclecticism that adds up natural and social factors. Instead, they want to help us see that nature and society are products of "conjoint constitution" in which each somehow gives rise to the other (361, 366-369, 372, 387). I strongly support this impulse, not just on technical grounds but disciplinary and political ones, too. It should be a central task of sociology to get clear on the specific contours of contemporary society, and it cannot do so without conceptualizing the intertwining of the social with the technoscientific knowledge, resources, and artifacts that make up much of our engagement with nature in the late 20th century. That said, I wonder if Freudenburg, Frickel, and Gramling (FFG, from now on) have accomplished their purpose. Their parting remark is that "It may be necessary . . . to recognize or to believe in the potential for mutual contingency, or the conjoint constitution of the physical and the social, before it is possible to see the ways in which the two are interrelated. Without progress in achieving such insights ... we run the risk of having our vision distorted by the very taken-for-grantedness of our socially agreed-upon definitions-the risk of being prisoners of our own perspectives" (388). And I am not sure that FFG went as far as they could in helping us escape the prison. In what follows, I explain why I feel that

Magical Properties: Vision, Possession, and Wonder in Othello

Abstract: A specter is haunting new historicism-the specter of the aesthetic: the attributes of beauty and sublimity, the realm of wonderful objects and feelings of awe. From Louis Montrose's evocation of the uncanny connections between Simon Forman's dream of Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream to Stephen Greenblatt's book, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, we can discern an investment in wonder among those whom we might have expected to be more attuned to the political dimensions of literature.' Of course, materialist criticism is entitled to examine the forms of wonder, since wonder is as much involved in the socio-political realm as is gender, rank, or race. But it is not merely a cool-headed interest in wonder that we find in new historicism; on the contrary, it is an undertaking to arouse amazement in the reader. For some practitioners, the attempt to awe their readers has to do with the cachet associated with the mystifying style of postmodernist French theory, but for lucid writers such as Montrose and Greenblatt, the attempt to arouse wonder has its roots in other ground. That ground is Shakespeare.

Shakespeare Translation as Cultural Exchange

Abstract: In August 1994 the Guardian’ s drama critic concluded his review of Peter Zadek’s production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Edinburgh Festival by claiming that its value to him lay in its not being in English: ‘Shakespeare in a foreign tongue’, he wrote, ‘becomes an analogue to the original that gives the director new freedom’, and ‘it will be hard’, after this, ‘to go back to traditional productions’. While it could be argued that Michael Billington, in journalistic haste, is confusing the strength of a ‘startling, radical, Brechtian’ production with the alienation effect of a foreign language, this was not so with Clement Scott, the formidable Daily Telegraph reviewer, when nearly a hundred years ago he praised Sarah Bernhardt in his book on Some Notable Hamlets of the Present Time (1900). Amazingly he manages to go into raptures over Madame Bernhardt's performance without once commenting on her gender; but he is explicit about the language of this Hamlet: 'With the French version of the immortal text I was charmed. It conveyed Shakespeare's idea in a nutshell' (p. 51). Both then and now, it seems, drama reviewers can be Sentimental Travellers: 'They order this matter better in France' . . . or in Germany . . . or Japan. But I wonder, when it comes to thinking about the implications of Billington's and Scott's proclaimed positions, if academic critics are such travellers? And, how seriously do we think about those implications? I wonder, that is, whether to the immensely fertile body of current Shakespeare studies, the study of translations might not be a stepchild — 'an interesting and harmless occupation for researchers abroad', as the editors of the recently published and excellently thought-provoking collection of essays on European Shakespeares put it, lamenting the lack of reciprocity between their discipline and English and American Shakespeare studies.

Fostering and Preserving Wonderment.

Abstract: What distinguishes humans from other animals is their ability to think, to reason and to wonder Infants try to make sense of life's complexities from the moment they are born Educators play a vit

Welcome to the dollhouse

Abstract: Welcome to the Dollhouse is a stark suburban comedy about eleven-year-old Dawn Wiener, a middle child in middle school in the middle of New Jersey. Sometimes hated, often reviled, seldom understood, Dawn tries in vain to put on a happy face as she struggles through the onset of what looks to be a long puberty. Life is generally grim, and sometimes it only gets grimmer. Nevertheless, she does find moments of grace amidst the humiliation of her first series of frustrated love affairs, and soon Dawn begins to wonder if life might not be better outside New Jersey.

Active listening : expanding understanding through content

Abstract: 1 What do you say first? 2 Sights and sounds 3 Pirates and such 4 Dating 5 A broad view of health 6 Advertising 7 Superstitions 8 Communicating 9 People's best friends 10 Mind your manners 11 Tales from the past 12 Decisions, decisions 13 Your type of personality 14 You've got to have art 15 I wonder how that works 16 A matter of values 17 Food for thought 18 We mean business 19 Everything we know is wrong 20 Poetry

Books That Invite Talk, Wonder, and Play.

Abstract: In this age of modern era, the use of internet must be maximized. Yeah, internet will help us very much not only for important thing but also for daily activities. Many people now, from any level can use internet. The sources of internet connection can also be enjoyed in many places. As one of the benefits is to get the on-line books that invite talk wonder and play book, as the world window, as many people suggest.

A piece of my mind. When you come into my room.

Abstract: When you come into my hospital room, you need to know the facts of my life that there is information not contained in my hospital chart that I am 40 years married, with 4 children and 4 grandchildren that I am "genetically Lutheran"... with gut disease, like Luther himself that I am a professor that I teach teachers, priests, sisters how to nurture faith in the next generation that I love earthy sensuous life, beauty, travel, eating, drinking J&B scotch, the theater, opera, the Chicago Symphony, movies, all kinds, water skiing, tennis, running, walking, camping that I love loving, the wonder and awe of sexual intimacy that I enjoy gardening, smell of soil in misty rain and scorching sun that I have led a chronic illness group for 12 years When you come into my room, you need to know the losses of my life that I have Crohn's disease

Bury the Liberal vs. Professional Arts Debate

Abstract: The debate between the relative value of a pure "liberal arts" education and one that combines the liberal arts with professional arts has been fueling academic fires for decades The debate has no place in the modern academy Historically some students who pursued the professional arts - business and education on the undergraduate level - were made to feel "second class" citizens of the university Frequently, students admitted to these programs were accused of entering the university through the "back door" And frequently this was a "self-fulfilling" prophecy Many of these students were "less credentialed" than their counterparts in the arts and sciences However a review of the history of the academy should eliminate this accusation Some of the oldest universities were founded for professional purposes The University of Salerno, one of Europe's oldest, was founded for the study of medicine A college was founded at Cambridge almost 700 years ago to provide "clerks for the King's service" Law, medicine, arts and theology are the four original higher faculties in a university Historically, "The universities have trained the intellectual pioneers of our civilization [sic] - the priests, the lawyers, the statesman, the doctors, the men of science, and the men of letters (Whitehead, 1929, 95)" Then, what is the question of the place of "liberal" versus "professional" arts in the university? To get a good understanding of the debate, one only has to read two books One is John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University (1852) and the other is Alfred North Whitehead's The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929) These two authors go to the heart of the debate For Alfred North Whitehead, the essence of a liberal education was: an education for thought and for aesthetic appreciation It proceeds by imparting a knowledge of the masterpieces of thought, of imaginative literature, and of art The action which it contemplates is command It is an aristocratic education implying leisure This Platonic ideal has rendered imperishable services to European civilization [sic] It has encouraged art, it has fostered that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the origin of science, it has maintained the dignity of mind in the face of material force, a dignity which claims freedom of thought For centuries, from Pope Nicholas V to the school of the Jesuits, and from the Jesuits to the modern schools, this educational ideal has had the strenuous support of the clergy For certain people it is a very good education It suites their type of mind and the circumstances amid which their life is passed But more has been claimed for it than this All education has been judged adequate or defective according to its approximation to this type (1929, 46) Whitehead saw the value of other types of education It is no wonder that Harvard chose him to be the inaugural speaker at the founding of its famous Business School For Newman (1852), education was for education's sake He believed: "This process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study of science, is disciplined for its sake, for the perception of its own proper object, and for its own highest culture, is called Liberal Education; (175)" The essence of a good liberal education for Newman was "the cultivation of the 'understanding,' a "talent for speculation and original inquiry," and "the habit of pushing things up to their first principles (183)" This, I would posit, is the origin of the issue For the disciples of John Henry Newman, a pure liberal arts education is the only type of education To enter into this debate, we must first ask: "What is the purpose of education?" There is only one subject matter for education and that is how to live To learn how to live, education must be useful …

Paying Attention to the Wonder and Skepticism of Science 1

Abstract: Considerable energy in the academy of pharmacy education has been devoted to changing the curriculum so that graduates of our programs are better able to deliver pharmaceutical care to patients We have assumed that pharmaceutical care is best delivered from a solid foundation in the sciences upon which the profession is based Therapeutic problemsolving is best done with an in-depth knowledge of how the human body works and how, in the presence of disease, it responds to medications The content of science in our curricula has spread from a foundation of chemistry, biology, pharmacology, medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutics to include behavioral, social, and economic sciences Despite this general attention given to the sciences, we have not given as much thought to the essence of science as understood by Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, William Withering, Claude Bernard, Paul Ehrlich, and Alexander Fleming This is the science of wonder, curiosity, reasoning, hypothesis testing, experimentation, and skepticism The science of our professional curriculum is often characterized by short-term memorization, information categorization by discipline, and many descriptive details Rather we should be focused on extensions of two basic questions: (i) How does the universe work?” and (ii) “What accounts for life?” These questions demand that we have an understanding of mechanisms and that we are constantly analyzing data, searching for the truth Sometimes, I have tried to gain an appreciation of what students are learning by asking them how they are doing when I see them in the halls I usually hear about those exams that they have survived and a list of exams which are coming up Perhaps, instead I should ask them if they have learned anything new about life and about how the universe works An indication of the impact that science has had on our students can be seen from a couple of anecdotes Have you ever discussed the Krebs Cycle with alumni of your pharmacy program I have had that experience and uniformly they recognize the term but few have a true understanding of the significance of the Krebs cycle They have missed the idea that this is nature’s way of having the body convert carbohydrates from food into a form of chemical energy that the body can use to regulate cellular function The way that nature has evolved a series of enzymes and cofactors, including oxygen, in a cyclical pattern to solve this problem should be of great fascination to students Instead it has been experienced as an exercise in the memorization of a meaningless series of names It does have a practical side too, for if one knows the function of the Krebs cycle, the action of a variety of poisons can be explained

Art Education and Technology: These are the Days of Miracles and Wonder

Abstract: This paper examines the impact on human consciousness of the exponential proliferation of electronic images, and offers suggestions concerning how educators should respond. A postmodern critique includes the ideas of an inverted Kantian aesthetics which embraces the everyday, a dramatic compression of space and time, and personal disorientation. A further critique grounds these views of consciousness in new economic arrangements and the rapaciousness of capitalism. I argue that the only viable educational response to this new consciousness is a critical examination of mass media imagery. Basic components of media education in schools are signposts of an appropriate response. ,. " 'I I. Miracles and Wonders 13 Art Education and Technology: These are the Days of Miracles and Wonder The secondary title of this paper is adapted from a line in the Paul Simon song, "The Boy in the Bubble," which appears on the Graceland disc of 1986. The song is about contrasts; between the distant and the immediate, illusion and reality, terror and the wonder of new technology. His images are kaleidoscopic, seemingly random, certainly fragmented. Babies are bombed, and we follow the action on television in slow motion, medical science has seemingly magical powers, and with "lasers in the jungle," even the wilderness is colonised by technology. Everywhere there are "staccato signals of constant information."

Modernism and Other Modes in Forster's 'The Longest Journey.' (E.M. Forster)

Abstract: What was modernism? Inter alia, it was anarchism, nihilism, apocalyptism, imperialism, masculinism, psychologism, skepticism, and primitivism: The list goes on, swelling in that sharply worded phantasmagoria we call literary history, collapsing any simplifying hierarchy but nonetheless swallowing up the slim contingent of Victorian hopefulnesses we know by the names liberalism, humanism, and progressivism. Liberal humanist progressives now trying to make peace with illiberal forms of postmodernism - the people Richard Rorty playfully calls "postmodern bourgeois liberals" - may be surprised to learn that modernism was an even more indomitable foe of liberalism than post-modernism now is. How did liberalism survive into the present? they might ask. As if the list offered above were not overwhelming enough, one can cite other lists.(1) One can make a list of such lists, and the effect is to sharpen our sense that, however we factor modernism, it was inexorable, even irresistible; it did not negotiate, it propagated. Lest one wonder whether such an image of modernism is but the self-serving fantasy of an antimodernist present, one needs to ask, what about the liberal humanist progressives who are not looking back on modernism but who faced it? How did modernism appear to them, and how did it appear to their opponents, the modernists themselves, and to these modernists' most devoted critics? All seem to agree: Modernist ironies were so apocalyptic that they had to be fought or fled, but whether fought or fled they were bound to eradicate even the staunchest humanist pieties.(2) Such an image of modernist apocalyptism is itself apocalyptic, and this essay, like several other recent studies of modernism, is devoted to challenging it. Few literary historians seem to think that Edwardian and early modernist writers could eradicate modernist intimations, but several have recently claimed that modernist apocalyptism was not so implacable that it could not be answered or annulled - or at least contained or circumvented (see Wollaeger, Levenson, and Longenbach). In attempting to add weight to this argument, I shall examine an early novel by E. M. Forster, one whose circumvention of the modern is the more illuminating for its being unusually complicated, obscure, and only partially successful: The Longest Journey (1907). A new look at this odd and unpretentious novel may surprise literary historians with the thought that modernism, even at its advent, was not ineluctable. Of course, Forster in 1907 was anticipating an arrival as much as he was addressing a familiar and nameable presence. One cannot be sure even that he would have called it "modernism," though in Journey he does speak of "the modern spirit" (290). But as Alan Wilde (1981) argues ("That Forster is a modernist . . . needs perhaps to be stressed" [51]), to ignore Forster's modernism is as ahistorical as discounting his humanism. The most historically sensitive study will respect the integrity of both and put them in tense relation, thereby bringing together readings that have tended to negate each other. On the one hand, liberal humanist critics have sometimes regarded the novel as a coherently Edwardian entity, one that celebrates the English countryside as Brookean salve for what Thomas Hardy in Tess called "the ache of modernism" (144). Though Forster tends to discourage this virtually mythological reading when he describes the composition of the novel as a case of disorderly conduct - "Thoughts and emotions collided if they did not always co-operate" ("Aspect of a Novel" [1228]) - John Colmer is not the only critic who believes that Forster managed to unify his rational satire ("thoughts") with that antithetical entity, prophecy ("emotions") and managed to make skepticism consort with romanticism.(3) On the other hand, and at the other end of the critical spectrum, is a virtually existentialist Forsterian like Barbara Rosecrance, for whom no such magisterial Forster emerges. …

The School Psychology Service

Abstract: Psychology infuses all aspects of our life—debates between politicians, family conflicts, one-on-one with death, the smile of a child…. It is no wonder that in the West, practical psychologists make up an important segment of society. In our country, however, until recently it was only priests who took on the role of practical psychologists. And these days, in addition, we now have all kinds of preachers, fringe-religion adherents, magicians, and ESP psychics.

Admirable Wit: Deinofēs and the Rise and Fall of Lyric Wonder

Abstract: : When lyric poets in late Renaissance England responded to the demand for wonder in poetry and all courtly activity by astonishing audiences through style, they drew upon the Greek rhetorical tradition, which presents roughness and obscurity as coordinate methods of making style deinos , or admirable. In the Life of Cowley , Samuel Johnson also sees roughness and obscurity as coordinate qualities in the verse of the “metaphysical poets” he says erred in pursuit of wonder. Before admirable style went out of fashion, poet-critics praised its ability to provoke the audience9s inferences and to transcend persuasion by “ravishing” the audience9s will, precisely the effects that Demetrius attributes to the charaktēr deinos in On Style . Yet deinolēs is the term used to describe both the most powerful style and the clever style of sophistic epideixis , and this breadth of meaning helps explain both the rise and fall of wit.

The wonder-rabbi of Kuzmir as a behaviour therapist

Abstract: The wonder-rabbi of Kuzmir provided a troubled person with advice that was consonant with the Judaic tradition and also with behavioural therapy that led this person to overcorning his problems.