Download or read book Humanities and Civic Life written by Paul Edward Gottfried and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume in Religion and Public Life, a series on religion and public affairs, provides a wide-ranging forum for differing views on religious and ethical considerations. The contributions address the decline of social capital-those patterns of behavior which are conducive to self-governance and the spirit of self-reliance-and its relation to the demise of the civic-humanist tradition in American education. The unifying theme, is that classical studies do not merely result in individual mastery over a particular technique or body of knowledge, but also link the individual to the polity and even to the whole of the cosmic order. At the same time, American republicanism, in its exaltation of the common man from the Jeffersonian agrarian soldier to the apotheosis of Lincoln tempers the classical ideal into something less exalted, if more democratic. The effects on the contemporary state of the liberal arts curriculum are demonstrated in articles critical of the market-model university. Two essays explore the historical and philosophical significance of the discipline of rhetoric, that has suffered under the hegemony of rationalistic philosophy. A concluding contribution, invokes Giambattista Vico as an eloquent defender of the humanities. Humanities and Civic Life includes: "Rome, Florence, and Philadelphia: Using the History of the Humanities to Renew Our Civic Life" by Robert E. Proctor; "The Dark Fields of the Republic: The Persistence of Republican Thought in American History" by David Brown; "Unleashing the Humanities" by Robert Weisbuch; "Liberal Arts: Listening to Faculty" by Dennis O'Brien; "Historical Consciousness in Antiquity" by Paul Gottfried; "Taking the Measure of Relativism and the Civic Virtue of Rhetoric" by Gabriel R. Ricci; "The River: A Vichian Dialogue on Humanistic Education" by Randall E. Auxier.
Download or read book Humanities and Civic Life written by and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Humanities and the Civic Imagination written by James Frank Veninga and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those who believe that the humanities in America are in trouble, suffering from over-specialization and never-ending intramural conflicts, this collection of addresses and essays provides much needed hope. Since the early 1970s, state humanities councils, working under a Congressional mandate, have developed important models of how the study of history, literature, and culture can be infused into the public life of the nation. Often countering trends that have dominated the humanities on campus, state councils, drawing upon the energies and resources of volunteer boards, professional staff, and public-minded scholars, have demonstrated through thousands of public programs--documentary films, conferences, readings and discussions, public issues forums, interpretive exhibits, oral histories, lectures, discussions, and workshops--that the humanities retain the capacity to help foster a communal vision that can revitalize the public life of the nation.
Download or read book What Should We Do written by Peter Levine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad theory of civic life that asks the question "What should we do?" and shows how to ask it well for civic engagement. People who want to improve the world must ask the fundamental civic question: "What should we do?" Although the specific issues and challenges people face are enormously diverse, they often encounter problems of collective action (how to get many individuals to act in concert), of discourse (how to talk and think productively about contentious matters), and of exclusion. To get things done, they must form or join and sustain functional groups, and through them, develop skills and virtues that help them to be effective and responsible civic actors. In What Should We Do?, Peter Levine, one of America's leading scholars and practitioners of civic engagement, identifies the general challenges that confront people who ask the citizens' question and explores solutions. Ultimately, his goal is to provide a unified theoretical foundation for effective civic engagement and citizen action. Levine draws from three rich traditions: research on collective action by Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, work on deliberation and discourse by Jürgen Habermas, and the nonviolent social movements led by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Using real-world examples, he develops a theory of citizen action that can effectively wrestle with these problems so that they don't destabilize movements. A broad theory of civic life, What Should We Do? turns from the question of what makes a society just to the question of how to relate to our fellow human beings in a context of injustice. And it offers pragmatic guidance for people who seek to improve the world.
Download or read book Civic Media Literacies written by Paul Mihailidis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civic life today is mediated. Communities small and large are now using connective platforms to share information, engage in local issues, facilitate vibrant debate, and advocate for social causes. In this timely book, Paul Mihailidis explores the texture of daily engagement in civic life, and the resources—human, technological, and practical—that citizens employ when engaging in civic actions for positive social impact. In addition to examining the daily civic actions that are embedded in media and digital literacies and human connectedness, Mihailidis outlines a model for empowering young citizens to use media to meaningfully engage in daily life.
Download or read book Riches for the Poor written by Earl Shorris and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2000 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today--addressing such issues as why people are poor and why they stay poor--and offers a unique solution to the problem. Print features.
Download or read book Why Place Matters written by Wilfred M. McClay and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support? Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society. The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.
Download or read book Call My Name Clemson written by Rhondda Robinson Thomas and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1890 and 1915, a predominately African American state convict crew built Clemson University on John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Plantation in upstate South Carolina. Calhoun’s plantation house still sits in the middle of campus. From the establishment of the plantation in 1825 through the integration of Clemson in 1963, African Americans have played a pivotal role in sustaining the land and the university. Yet their stories and contributions are largely omitted from Clemson’s public history. This book traces “Call My Name: African Americans in Early Clemson University History,” a Clemson English professor’s public history project that helped convince the university to reexamine and reconceptualize the institution’s complete and complex story from the origins of its land as Cherokee territory to its transformation into an increasingly diverse higher-education institution in the twenty-first century. Threading together scenes of communal history and conversation, student protests, white supremacist terrorism, and personal and institutional reckoning with Clemson’s past, this story helps us better understand the inextricable link between the history and legacies of slavery and the development of higher education institutions in America.
Download or read book Not for Profit written by Martha C. Nussbaum and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this short and powerful book, celebrated philosopher Martha Nussbaum makes a passionate case for the importance of the liberal arts at all levels of education. Historically, the humanities have been central to education because they have been seen as essential for creating competent democratic citizens. But recently, Nussbaum argues, thinking about the aims of education has gone disturbingly awry in the United States and abroad. We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world. In response to this dire situation, Nussbaum argues that we must resist efforts to reduce education to a tool of the gross national product. Rather, we must work to reconnect education to the humanities in order to give students the capacity to be true democratic citizens of their countries and the world. In a new preface, Nussbaum explores the current state of humanistic education globally and shows why the crisis of the humanities has far from abated. Translated into over twenty languages, Not for Profit draws on the stories of troubling—and hopeful—global educational developments. Nussbaum offers a manifesto that should be a rallying cry for anyone who cares about the deepest purposes of education.
Download or read book Democracy as Creative Practice written by Tom Borrup and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life offers arts-based solutions to the threats to democracies around the world, practices that can foster more just and equitable societies. Chapter authors are artists, activists, curators, and teachers applying creative and cultural practices in deliberate efforts to build democratic ways of working and interacting in their communities in a range of countries including the United States, Australia, Portugal, Nepal, the United Kingdom, and Canada. The book demonstrates how creativity is integrated in place-based actions, aesthetic strategies, learning environments, and civic processes. As long-time champions and observers of community-based creative and cultural practices, editors Tom Borrup and Andrew Zitcer elucidate work that not only responds to sociopolitical conditions but advances practice. They call on artists, funders, cultural organizations, community groups, educational institutions, government, and others to engage in and support this work that fosters a culture of democracy. This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities and social sciences, activists, funders, and artists who seek to understand and effect change on local and global scales to preserve, extend, and improve practices of democracy.
Download or read book The Work of Art in the World written by Doris Sommer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-08 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating art and interpretation that take on social challenges, Doris Sommer steers the humanities back to engagement with the world. The reformist projects that focus her attention develop momentum and meaning as they circulate through society to inspire faith in the possible. Among the cases that she covers are top-down initiatives of political leaders, such as those launched by Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, and also bottom-up movements like the Theatre of the Oppressed created by the Brazilian director, writer, and educator Augusto Boal. Alleging that we are all cultural agents, Sommer also takes herself to task and creates Pre-Texts, an international arts-literacy project that translates high literary theory through popular creative practices. The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers and theorists. Foremost among them is the eighteenth-century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who remains an eloquent defender of art-making and humanistic interpretation in the construction of political freedom. Schiller's thinking runs throughout Sommer's modern-day call for citizens to collaborate in the endless co-creation of a more just and more beautiful world.
Download or read book The Arts and Civic Engagement written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Multifaceted Nature of Civic Participation written by Ram A. Cnaan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-11-24 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civic participation is an ideal concept in most democratic societies. In this review, Cnaan and Park document how key writings are limited in scope and are either nonprofit, political science or environmental studies oriented. Cnaan and Park conclude with a call for future research of civic participation to be both comprehensive and sensitive.
Download or read book Maker Centered Learning written by Edward P. Clapp and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Agency by Design guide to implementing maker-centered teaching and learning Maker-Centered Learning provides both a theoretical framework and practical resources for the educators, curriculum developers, librarians, administrators, and parents navigating this burgeoning field. Written by the expert team from the Agency by Design initiative at Harvard's Project Zero, this book Identifies a set of educational practices and ideas that define maker-centered learning, and introduces the focal concepts of maker empowerment and sensitivity to design. Shares cutting edge research that provides evidence of the benefits of maker-centered learning for students and education as a whole. Presents a clear Project Zero-based framework for maker-centered teaching and learning Includes valuable educator resources that can be applied in a variety of design and maker-centered learning environments Describes unique thinking routines that foster the primary maker capacities of looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity. A surge of voices from government, industry, and education have argued that, in order to equip the next generation for life and work in the decades ahead, it is vital to support maker-centered learning in various educational environments. Maker-Centered Learning provides insight into what that means, and offers tools and knowledge that can be applied anywhere that learning takes place.
Download or read book Education and Equality written by Danielle Allen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American education as we know it today—guaranteed by the state to serve every child in the country—is still less than a hundred years old. It’s no wonder we haven’t agreed yet as to exactly what role education should play in our society. In these Tanner Lectures, Danielle Allen brings us much closer, examining the ideological impasse between vocational and humanistic approaches that has plagued educational discourse, offering a compelling proposal to finally resolve the dispute. Allen argues that education plays a crucial role in the cultivation of political and social equality and economic fairness, but that we have lost sight of exactly what that role is and should be. Drawing on thinkers such as John Rawls and Hannah Arendt, she sketches out a humanistic baseline that re-links education to equality, showing how doing so can help us reframe policy questions. From there, she turns to civic education, showing that we must reorient education’s trajectory toward readying students for lives as democratic citizens. Deepened by commentaries from leading thinkers Tommie Shelby, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Michael Rebell, and Quiara Alegría Hudes that touch on issues ranging from globalization to law to linguistic empowerment, this book offers a critical clarification of just how important education is to democratic life, as well as a stirring defense of the humanities.
Download or read book Civic Life Online written by W. Lance Bennett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship of participation in online communities to civic and political engagement. Young people today have grown up living substantial portions of their lives online, seeking entertainment, social relationships, and a place to express themselves. It is clear that participation in online communities is important for many young people, but less clear how this translates into civic or political engagement. This volume examines the relationship of online action and real-world politics. The contributors discuss not only how online networks might inspire conventional political participation but also how creative uses of digital technologies are expanding the boundaries of politics and public issues. Do protests in gaming communities, music file sharing, or fan petitioning of music companies constitute political behavior? Do the communication skills and patterns of action developed in these online activities transfer to such offline realms as voting and public protests? Civic Life Online describes the many forms of civic life online that could predict a generation's political behavior. Contributors Marina Umaschi Bers, Stephen Coleman, Jennifer Earl, Kirsten Foot, Peter Levine, Kathryn C. Montgomery, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Howard Rheingold, Allen Schussman, Luke Walker, Michael Xenos
Download or read book The Humanities in American Life written by Commission on the Humanities (1978- ) and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1980-01-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the present position of the humanities in the educational system and culture of the United States and recommends methods for finding sources of financial support for the humanities
