Home About us Contact
|
Home About us Contact | ||
|
|
||
Critical Approach (critical + approach)
Selected AbstractsActor-Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political EcologyANTIPODE, Issue 4 2009Ryan Holifield Abstract:, Recent critiques of environmental justice research emphasize its disengagement from theory and its political focus on liberal conceptions of distributional and procedural justice. Marxian urban political ecology has been proposed as an approach that can both contextualize environmental inequalities more productively and provide a basis for a more radical politics of environmental justice. Although this work takes its primary inspiration from historical materialism, it also adapts key concepts from actor-network theory (ANT),in particular, the agency of nonhumans,while dismissing the rest of ANT as insufficiently critical and explanatory. This paper argues that ANT,specifically, the version articulated by Bruno Latour,provides a basis for an alternative critical approach to environmental justice research and politics. Instead of arguing for a synthesis of ANT and Marxism, I contend that ANT gives us a distinctive conception of the,social,and opens up new questions about the production and justification of environmental inequalities. [source] Writing the West: Critical Approaches to ShaneLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007Ruth Griffin Representations of the American West have perhaps resonated most strongly in the western film genre, yet at the same time, the literary western is a highly developed and sophisticated genre in its own right. Meanwhile, critical approaches to the West have become increasingly wide-ranging, spanning historical/literary studies; film/cultural studies; genre; gender studies; philosophy, structuralism and, most recently, post-modernism. In light of such critical diversity, this article places a literary text alongside a western film in order to illustrate and demonstrate potential critical approaches to the western. To this end it takes Jack Schaefer's novel Shane as its case study with two main organising principles in mind. Firstly, analysis of the text demonstrates the ways in which critical methods and theoretical debates can be applied to the literary western. As a result, I assess, for example, the convention which applies historical co-ordinates to fictional representations, as well as the challenges posed by alternative modes of critique. Secondly, the novel is placed alongside the filmic adaptation in order to demonstrate the fluid nature of western forms and the critical approaches which can be used to analyse them. Finally, I offer my own perspective, suggesting that the methodologies and textual forms explored in the article signal the need for trans-disciplinary critical approaches which reflect both the simplicity and the diversity of the western as a whole. [source] In Conrad's Footsteps: Critical Approaches to Africanist Travel WritingLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2006Robert Burroughs Travel writing about Central Africa in English reverberates with the language of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This essay considers how that canonical text, in shaping twentieth-century travellers' understandings of Central Africa and the travel genre, also shapes literary critics' understandings of the same subjects. [source] Should we measure corporate social responsibility?CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2003Dr Jouni Korhonen This paper is critical towards efforts that try and measure corporate social responsibility (CSR). A critical approach can be important for the development of the theory of the emerging field of corporate social responsibility. A critical and provocative approach can generate discussion and debate. Three main points of critique are presented toward the current efforts in the literature to measure corporate contributions to economic, social and ecological sustainability. First, the use of the concepts of eco-efficiency and eco-efficacy in measuring corporate contributions to sustainability are criticized from the viewpoint of the complementarity relation of human-manufactured capital, natural capital and social sustaining functions. Second, the use of measures that focus on an individual process or an individual company are reconsidered with an approach to industrial and firm networks. Third, the use of the monetary value is reconsidered, e.g. by suggesting an approach based on physical material and energy flows and on a new paradigmatic foundation for social responsibility. The social and ecological indicators illustrating the social and environmental impacts of economic activity and of firms can be combined with economic indicators, but not expressed in monetary terms. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment. [source] Delinquent Pedigrees: Revision, Lineage, and Spatial Rhetoric in The Duchess of MalfiENGLISH LITERARY RENAISSANCE, Issue 3 2009Michelle M. Dowd Locating John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi within a cluster of early seventeenth-century concerns about legitimacy and hereditary succession, this essay traces the ways in which Webster strategically alters his primary narrative source, William Painter's The Palace of Pleasure, so as to expose rather than to suppress the indeterminacy of patrilineality. Webster's tragedy focuses specifically on a remarrying widow and her children, a particular social problem that makes visible the contradictions inherent to the early modern system of patrilineal inheritance. The action of the play thus stages the tensions between the dominant legal form of patrilineality and the material practices shaping and changing it. Drawing in part on the theories of Michel de Certeau, this essay takes a fresh critical approach to the play by placing particular emphasis on the distinctively spatialized aspects of Webster's dramaturgical rendering of his source material and noting the ways in which he uses the ideological and physical spaces of the stage to highlight the inscrutability of the succession. In addition, in its focus on Webster's revisions of Painter, the essay considers how drama as a genre can spatially reimagine the social relationships and possibilities for agency that are produced through patterns of hereditary succession. As such, The Duchess of Malfi serves as a useful case study for theorizing the narrative and dramaturgical methods by which patriarchy is constructed, contested, and reformulated in early modern English culture (M.M.D.). [source] Tuvalu and Climate Change: Constructions of Environmental Displacement in The Sydney Morning HeraldGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 4 2005Carol Farbotko Abstract Tuvalu, a place whose image in the ,West' is as a small island state, insignificant and remote on the world stage, is becoming remarkably prominent in connection with the contemporary issue of climate change-related sea-level rise. My aim in this paper is to advance understanding of the linkages between climate change and island places, by exploring the discursive negotiation of the identity of geographically distant islands and island peoples in the Australian news media. Specifically, I use discourse analytic methods to critically explore how, and to what effects, various representations of the Tuvaluan islands and people in an Australian broadsheet, the Sydney Morning Herald, emphasize difference between Australia and Tuvalu. My hypothesis is that implicating climate change in the identity of people and place can constitute Tuvaluans as .tragic victims. of environmental displacement, marginalizing discourses of adaptation for Tuvaluans and other inhabitants of low-lying islands, and silencing alternative constructions of Tuvaluan identity that could emphasize resilience and resourcefulness. By drawing attention to the problematic ways that island identities are constituted in climate change discourse in the news media, I advocate a more critical approach to the production and consumption of representations of climate change. [source] Caribbean Children's Geographies: A Case Study of JamaicaGEOGRAPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007Therese Ferguson Understanding children's lives within the various spaces, places, and environments they inhabit is critical to making their worlds safer, facilitating their participatory roles in society, and implementing policies relevant to their realities. While the children's geographies scholarship is rapidly growing, much of the research is still centred on children in the ,West', with less focus on those in developing countries. Within the Third World, the Caribbean itself is slightly marginalised. This article uses the island-nation of Jamaica as a case study within the Caribbean region, examining some of the areas of interest in research on children's environments, and reflecting upon progress made in the range of methodological and theoretical approaches brought to the research agenda. It suggests prospective directions for future research to further a critical approach to this expanding field, both within Jamaica and the wider region. It ends by briefly raising some ethical issues for consideration, arising from advancing a research agenda with children at its fore. [source] Irony, critique and ethnomethodology in the study of computer work: irreconcilable tensions?INFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2008Teresa Marcon Abstract. To broaden discussion of critique in the field of information systems beyond current approaches, we look outside the core management discourse and examine the critical element in ethnomethodological research on computer-based work environments. Our examination reveals a form of critique that is above all without irony, seeking always to be respectful of the competence of research subjects, and informed by an in-depth understanding of participants' practices. We argue that ethnomethodology is an often unrecognised critical approach that attempts to speak from within a community of practice and deliver critical insights that are responsive to the kinds of practical problems of interest to practitioners. [source] Researching human resource development: emergence of a critical approach to HRD enquiryINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2006Claire Valentin This paper argues that mainstream research in management and human resource development (HRD) is dominated by a positivist paradigm. In a theoretical discussion and review of literature on management, human resource management, HRD and organization studies, it explores critical perspectives in research, which draw on postmodernism and critical theory. It examines how they have contributed to the emergence of a critical HRD and discusses the features of a critical HRD research. [source] The Concept of Social Exclusion in the European Union: Context, Development and PossibilitiesJCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 3 2000Rob Atkinson In recent years the term ,social exclusion' has come to occupy a central place in the discussion of social policy and inequality in Europe. While the notion has acquired important strategic connotations, by stressing structural and cultural/social processes, the precise meaning of the term remains somewhat elusive. This article focuses on the reason for and the manner in which the notion of social exclusion has developed within the EU social policy discourse, aiming to provide a clearer understanding of its origins, functions and multiple dimensions. Whilst adopting a critical approach to the notion of social exclusion, the article suggests that the concept has played a positive role in keeping issues such as inequality and poverty on the policy agenda. The article also suggests possible ways in which social exclusion might be developed in a climate which has become less conducive, if not hostile, to an autonomous, activist EU social policy. [source] Changes in professional conceptions of suicide prevention among psychologists: using a conceptual modelJOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2002Maila Upanne Abstract This prospective follow-up study monitored the evolution of psychologists' conceptions of suicide prevention over the course of their participation in psychological autopsy studies that constituted the first phase of the National Suicide Prevention Project in Finland. Another purpose of the study was to consider the feasibility of an earlier suicide prevention model. Ideas on prevention were compared in two different situations and items were categorized using descriptive and conceptual criteria of prevention. They could be classified into a typology of four categories: care approach, cultural-educational approach, conditions approach, and critical approach. The follow-up suggested that the model is a feasible method for analysing conceptions of suicide prevention, and that it was possible to interpret conceptions in a theoretically adequate manner. In addition, ideas could be compared with certain known theoretical models of prevention. The model could thus be used in further research and for practical purposes. Experiences of psychological autopsy studies definitely had an impact on the psychologists' views; conceptions altered towards emphasizing the care approach and individual risk factors. Nonetheless, the overall structure of the prevention paradigm remained multifactorial, stressing multistage influencing. Surprisingly, the priority of acute suicide risk as a preventive target did not increase. Promotive aims remained the most important aim category. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Spatial Governance and Working Class Public Spheres: The Case of a Chartist Demonstration at Hyde ParkJOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2001John Michael Roberts The concepts of the public sphere and public space have gained increasing purchase within social history. This paper contributes to this literature by theoretically developing a critical approach to both concepts. By drawing upon the insights of the Bakhtin circle, as well as Marxism and Poststructuralism, the paper suggests that public spheres under capitalism are structured through the basic contradiction between capital and labour. Each public sphere may then be seen as a refracted dialogic and spatial form of this basic contradiction, and is then best viewed as a contradictory spatial entity that obtains its unique identity through different "accents" and "word signs". The capitalist state must aim to regulate, through governance and law, dialogue within a public sphere. By focusing on the Chartist demonstration at Hyde Park, London in 1855, I show how these theories can be employed to explore how a radical social movement appropriated space by developing a working class public sphere. [source] The Myth of ,Scientific Method' in Contemporary Educational ResearchJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2006DARRELL PATRICK ROWBOTTOM Whether educational research should employ the ,scientific method' has been a recurring issue in its history. Hence, textbooks on research methods continue to perpetuate the idea that research students ought to choose between competing camps: ,positivist' or ,interpretivist'. In reference to one of the most widely referred to educational research methods textbooks on the market,namely Research Methods in Education by Cohen, Manion, and Morrison,this paper demonstrates (1) the misconception of science in operation and (2) the perversely false dichotomy that has become enshrined in educational research. It then advocates a new approach, and suggests that the fixation with ,science' versus ,non-science' is counterproductive, when what is actually required for good inquiry is a critical approach to knowledge claims. [source] Competitive analysis, structure and strategy in politics: a critical approachJOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2006Gareth Smith This article begins by arguing that the structure of the political market differs significantly from business markets and that, consequently, the prescribed strategies from ,traditional' marketing theory are not always appropriate in politics. Then the military metaphor is applied to the political market and its ability to illuminate competitive strategy in this market is explored. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of direct and indirect strategies in politics over the lifecycle of a parliament. The relevance of military principles in implementing the strategies identified is then considered. The paper concludes with a wider discussion of the limitations of the military/competitive model as applied to politics and a general indication of how a more comprehensive competitive model might be created. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] A Shakespearean Character on the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Recognizing PerditaLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2010Emily Hodgson Anderson Shakespeare's characters have always fascinated readers and viewers, yet for the past several decades ,character criticism' has been unpopular among Shakespearean scholars. Recently, although, ,character' has made a resurgence, especially in the context of performance studies. The 18th-century stage presents a good venue from within which to examine this new critical approach, as 18th-century audiences were enamored both with Shakespeare's plays and the offstage lives of the actors they came to see. Building from this fact, this essay examines the influence of the actor/role relationship on popular theories of characterization; in particular, it focuses on the actress Mary Robinson and the character of Perdita. By asking what it meant for audiences to recognize Robinson as ,Perdita', and ,Perdita' as Mary Robinson, the essay provides one example of how attention to performance history can enrich our analysis of Shakespearean characters today. [source] The Language of "Circule":MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2010Discursive Construction of False Referral in Iranian Teaching Hospitals This article explores the practice of false patient out-referral by medical students in Iranian teaching hospital emergency departments. Drawing on participant-observations and interviews during eight months in six hospitals in Tehran, we investigate how discourse is appropriated to construct and legitimate out-referrals through four general strategies of sympathy, mystification, intimidation, and procrastination. Based on a critical approach to false out-referral discourse, we revisit the medical and educational functioning of teaching hospitals in Iran: Focusing on medical students involved in false out-referrals, their discursive reproduction of deception is examined along with their legitimate challenges to institutional structures. Moreover, focusing on the institution of hospital, institutional corruption is discussed along with the problematic of covert cultural defiance faced by a modernist organizational construct in a nonmainstream cultural context. Finally, we argue that the discourse of false out-referral calls for more profound public awareness in dealing with health institutions. [source] The ,greening' of global project financing: the case of the Sakhalin-II offshore oil and gas projectTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 3 2007MIKE BRADSHAW This article responds to a plea for economic geographers to play greater attention to the world's resource peripheries. The article presents a detailed case study of oil and gas development offshore of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East. The study serves to illustrate the complexity of resource peripheries and to demonstrate how a critical approach to resource geographies aids economic geographic theorization of globalization. The case study focuses on how the ,greening' of global project financing has created a means by which environmental non-governmental organizations hold the international oil companies to account. The article describes the transnational advocacy network that has developed to protest against the Sakhalin-II project. The key issues are identified and the response of the operator, Sakhalin Energy, is considered. Finally, the recent actions of the Russian Government in relation to the environmental impacts of the Sakhalin-II project are examined. The article concludes by assessing the ways in which the Sakhalin case demonstrates the complex processes that construct resource peripheries and how such analyses contribute to the development of a truly global economic geography. Le ,verdissement' du financement de projets à l'échelle mondiale: Le cas du projet pétrolier et gazier en mer Sakhaline-2 Cet article plaide pour l'engagement des géographes économiques dans l'étude des régions ressources périphériques. L'article présente une étude de cas détaillée de l'exploitation des réserves de pétrole et de gaz au large de l'île russe de Sakhaline à l'extrémité Est de la Russie. L'étude a pour but d'illustrer la complexité des régions ressources périphériques et de démontrer comment une démarche critique dans le champ de la géographie des ressources contribue à la théorisation de la mondialisation en géographie économique. L'étude de cas porte sur la façon dont le , verdissement , du financement de projets à l'échelle mondiale a permis aux organismes environnementaux non gouvernementaux de demander des comptes aux sociétés pétrolières internationales. L'article présente un portrait du réseau transnational de défense mis sur pied dans le but de protester contre le projet énergétique Sakhaline-2. Les principaux enjeux sont abordés ainsi que la réponse apportée par l'opérateur du projet Sakhalin Energy. On termine par un examen des actions récentes menées par le gouvernement russe dans le dossier des impacts environnementaux du projet Sakhaline-2. Un bilan du cas de Sakhaline, présenté en conclusion, démontre les processus complexes par lesquels les régions ressources périphériques sont créées et comment de telles analyses sont une contribution au développement d'une géographie économique rayonnante à l'échelle mondiale. [source] Towards a feminist geopoliticsTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 2 2001JENNIFER HYNDMAN The intersections and conversations between feminist geography and political geography have been surprisingly few. The notion of a feminist geopolitics remains undeveloped in geography. This paper aims to create a theoretical and practical space in which to articulate a feminist geopolitics. Feminist geopolitics is not an alternative theory of geopolitics, nor the ushering in of a new spatial order, but is an approach to global issues with feminist politics in mind. ,Feminist' in this context refers to analyses and political interventions that address the unequal and often violent relationships among people based on real or perceived differences. Building upon the literature from critical geopolitics, feminist international relations, and transnational feminist studies, I develop a framework for feminist political engagement. The paper interrogates concepts of human security and juxtaposes them with state security, arguing for a more accountable, embodied, and responsive notion of geopolitics. A feminist geopolitics is sought by examining politics at scales other than that of the nation-state; by challenging the public/private divide at a global scale; and by analyzing the politics of mobility for perpetrators of crimes against humanity. As such, feminist geopolitics is a critical approach and a contingent set of political practices operating at scales finer and coarser than the nation-state. [source] Actor-Network Theory as a Critical Approach to Environmental Justice: A Case against Synthesis with Urban Political EcologyANTIPODE, Issue 4 2009Ryan Holifield Abstract:, Recent critiques of environmental justice research emphasize its disengagement from theory and its political focus on liberal conceptions of distributional and procedural justice. Marxian urban political ecology has been proposed as an approach that can both contextualize environmental inequalities more productively and provide a basis for a more radical politics of environmental justice. Although this work takes its primary inspiration from historical materialism, it also adapts key concepts from actor-network theory (ANT),in particular, the agency of nonhumans,while dismissing the rest of ANT as insufficiently critical and explanatory. This paper argues that ANT,specifically, the version articulated by Bruno Latour,provides a basis for an alternative critical approach to environmental justice research and politics. Instead of arguing for a synthesis of ANT and Marxism, I contend that ANT gives us a distinctive conception of the,social,and opens up new questions about the production and justification of environmental inequalities. [source] Comment on ,The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research'INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2008LANCE FREEMAN Abstract 'The eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research' offers the premise that scholars are becoming less critical of gentrification and that this trend is detrimental to those most vulnerable to gentrification. This argument falls short on a number of grounds. First, the article does not persuasively show that the scholarly literature on gentrification has indeed become less critical. More significantly, Slater does not consider perhaps the most important reason that gentrification can be accurately described in both critical and less than critical terms , gentrification's impacts are multifaceted, affecting different people differently and even the same individuals in different ways. Finally, those most threatened by gentrification are likely to need a combination of resistance and persuasion to blunt the ill effects of gentrification. Slater's call for more critical approaches may inspire some to resist, but will do little to persuade the larger society to take their concerns seriously. Given that those most threatened by gentrification are among the least powerful, their cause will most benefit from a combination of literature that inspires resistance as well as literature that persuades others that gentrification is truly a predicament. Therefore, literature that not merely criticizes gentrification but offers a rationale for blunting its detrimental effects is needed as well. Résumé L'article intitulé The eviction of critical perspectives from gentrification research pose en principe que les chercheurs se font moins critiques sur la ,gentrification' et que cette tendance porte préjudice aux plus vulnérables face à ce phénomène. Cet argument ne tient pas pour plusieurs raisons. D'abord, il n'est pas montré de manière probante que la littérature académique sur la ,gentrification' soit vraiment devenue moins critique. De façon plus marquante, Slater n'étudie pas la raison, peut-être la plus importante, pour laquelle la ,gentrification' peut être décrit avec exactitude en termes à la fois critiques et moins critiques : en effet, ses impacts revêtent plusieurs aspects, affectant différemment les populations différentes, voire les mêmes populations. Enfin, les plus menacés par la ,gentrification' ont sans doute besoin d'un mélange de résistance et de persuasion pour atténuer les effets négatifs du processus. L'appel de Slater à des approches plus critiques peut susciter la résistance chez certains, mais va difficilement convaincre la société de traiter sérieusement le problème. Etant donné que les plus menacés font partie des moins puissants, leur cause bénéficiera surtout d'une combinaison de publications inspirant la résistance et de textes capables de convaincre de toute la complexité de la situation liée à la ,gentrification'. En conséquence, une littérature qui ne se contente pas de critiquer la ,gentrification', mais qui propose un raisonnement pour en atténuer les effets néfastes, a tout autant d'utilité. [source] Towards an Epistolary Discourse: Receiving the Eighteenth-Century LetterLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 7 2010Claudine Van Hensbergen This article suggests the significance of letters as texts in the long 18th century. It provides a survey of past and present critical approaches to letters in the period, and outlines the various ways in which scholars use letters in their research. The article argues against the tendency to conceive of the letter as a distinct literary genre, and rather suggests that scholars should think in terms of a broader epistolary discourse. [source] Teaching & Learning Guide for: Victorian Life WritingLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 5 2007Valerie Sanders Author's Introduction The Victorian period was one of the great ages for life-writing. Though traditionally renowned for its monumental ,lives and letters', mainly of great men, this was also a time of self-conscious anxiety about the genre. Critics and practitioners alike were unsure who should be writing autobiography, and whether its inherent assertiveness ruled out all but public men as appropriate subjects. It was also a period of experimentation in the different genres of life-writing , whether autobiography, journals, letters, autobiographical novels, and narratives of lives combined with extracts from correspondence and diaries. Victorian life-writing therefore provides rich and complex insights into the relationship between narrative, identity, and the definition of the self. Recent advances in criticism have highlighted the more radical and non-canonical aspects of life-writing. Already a latecomer to the literary-critical tradition (life-writing was for a long time the ,poor relation' of critical theory), auto/biography stresses the hidden and silent as much as the mainstream and vocal. For that reason, study of Victorian life-writing appeals to those with an interest in gender issues, postcolonialism, ethnicity, working-class culture, the history of religion, and family and childhood studies , to name but a few of the fields with which the genre has a natural connection. Author Recommends A good place to start is the two canonical texts for Victorian life-writing: George P. Landow's edited collection, Approaches to Victorian Autobiography (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979) and Avrom Fleishman's Figures of Autobiography: The Language of Self-Writing in Victorian and Modern England (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1983). These two re-ignited interest in Victorian life-writing and in effect opened the debate about extending the canon, though both focus on the firmly canonical Ruskin and Newman, among others. By contrast, David Amigoni's recently edited collection of essays, Life-Writing and Victorian Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate 2006) shows how far the canon has exploded and expanded: it begins with a useful overview of the relationship between lives, life-writing, and literary genres, while subsequent chapters by different authors focus on a particular individual or family and their cultural interaction with the tensions of life-writing. As this volume is fairly male-dominated, readers with an interest in women's life-writing might prefer to start with Linda Peterson's chapter, ,Women Writers and Self-Writing' in Women and Literature in Britain 1800,1900, ed. Joanne Shattock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 209,230. This examines the shift from the eighteenth-century tradition of the chroniques scandaleuses to the professional artist's life, domestic memoir, and spiritual autobiography. Mary Jean Corbett's Representing Femininity: Middle-Class Subjectivity in Victorian and Edwardian Women's Autobiographies (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992) begins with material on Wordsworth and Carlyle, but ,aims to contest the boundaries of genre, gender, and the autobiographical tradition by piecing together a partial history of middle-class women's subjectivities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries' (3). Corbett is particularly interested in the life-writing of actresses and suffragettes as well as Martineau and Oliphant, the first two women autobiographers to be welcomed into the canon in the 1980s and 90s. Laura Marcus's Auto/biographical Discourses, Theory, Criticism, Practice (Manchester and New York, NY: Manchester University Press, 1994) revises and updates the theoretical approaches to the study of life-writing, stressing both the genre's hybrid qualities, and its inherent instability: in her view, it ,comes into being as a category to be questioned' (37). Another of her fruitful suggestions is that autobiography functions as a ,site of struggle' (9), an idea that can be applied to aesthetic or ideological issues. Her book is divided between specific textual examples (such as the debate about autobiography in Victorian periodicals), and an overview of developments in critical approaches to life-writing. Her second chapter includes material on Leslie Stephen, who is also the first subject of Trev Lynn Broughton's Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/biography in the Late Victorian Period (London: Routledge, 1999) , her other being Froude's controversial Life of Carlyle. With the advent of gender studies and masculinities, there is now a return to male forms of life-writing, of which Martin A. Danahay's A Community of One: Masculine Autobiography and Autonomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993) is a good example. Danahay argues that nineteenth-century male autobiographers present themselves as ,autonomous individuals' free of the constraints of social and familial contexts, thus emphasizing the autonomy of the self at the expense of family and community. Online Materials My impression is that Victorian life-writing is currently better served by books than by online resources. There seem to be few general Web sites other than University module outlines and reading lists; for specific authors, on the other hand, there are too many to list here. So the only site I'd recommend is The Victorian Web: http://.victorianweb.org/genre/autobioov.html This Web site has a section called ,Autobiography Overview', which begins with an essay, ,Autobiography, Autobiographicality and Self-Representation', by George P. Landow. There are sections on other aspects of Victorian autobiography, including ,Childhood as a Personal Myth', autobiography in Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and a list of ,Suggested Readings'. Each section is quite short, but summarizes the core issues succinctly. Sample Syllabus This sample syllabus takes students through the landmarks of Victorian life-writing, and demonstrates the development of a counter-culture away from the mainstream ,classic male life' (if there ever was such a thing) , culminating in the paired diaries of Arthur Munby (civil servant) and Hannah Cullwick (servant). Numerous other examples could have been chosen, but for those new to the genre, this is a fairly classic syllabus. One week only could be spent on the ,classic male texts' if students are more interested in pursuing other areas. Opening Session Open debate about the definition of Victorian ,life-writing' and its many varieties; differences between autobiography, autobiographical fiction, diary, letters, biography, collective biography, and memoir; the class could discuss samples of selected types, such as David Copperfield, Father and Son, Ruskin's Praeterita, and Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë. Alternatively, why not just begin with Stave Two of Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843), in which the First Spirit takes Scrooge back through his childhood and youth? This is a pretty unique type of life-writing, with Scrooge ,laughing and crying' as his childhood and youth are revealed to him in a series of flashbacks (a Victorian version of ,This is Your Life?'). The dual emotions are important to note at this stage and will prompt subsequent discussions of sentimentality and writing for comic effect later in the course. Week 2 Critical landmarks: discussion of important stages in the evolution of critical approaches to life-writing, including classics such as Georges Gusdorf's ,Conditions and Limits of Autobiography', in Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. James Olney (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), 28,47; Philippe Lejeune's ,The Autobiographical Pact', in On Autobiography, ed. Paul John Eakin, trans. Katherine Leary (original essay 1973; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 3,30; and Paul De Man's ,Autobiography as De-Facement', Modern Language Notes 94 (1979): 919,30. This will provide a critical framework for the rest of the course. Weeks 3,4 Extracts from the ,male classics' of Victorian life-writing: J. S. Mill's Autobiography (1873), Ruskin's Praeterita (1885,89), and Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). What do they think is important and what do they miss out? How open or otherwise are they about their family and personal lives? Are these essentially ,lives of the mind'? How self-aware are they of autobiographical structures? Are there already signs that the ,classic male life' is fissured and unconventional? An option here would be to spend the first week focusing on male childhoods, and the second on career trajectories. Perhaps use Martin Danahay's theory of the ,autonomous individual' (see above) to provide a critical framework here: how is the ,Other' (parents, Harriet Taylor) treated in these texts? Weeks 5,6 Victorian women's autobiography: Harriet Martineau's Autobiography (1877) and Margaret Oliphant's Autobiography (1899): in many ways these are completely unalike, Martineau's being ordered around the idea of steady mental growth and public recognition, while Oliphant's is deeply emotional and disordered. Can we therefore generalize about ,women's autobiography'? What impact did they have on Victorian theories of life-writing? Students might like to reconsider Jane Eyre as an ,autobiography' alongside these and compare scenes of outright rebellion. The way each text handles time and chronology is also fascinating: Martineau's arranged to highlight stages of philosophical development, while Oliphant's switches back and forth in a series of ,flashbacks' to her happier youth as her surviving two sons die ,in the text', interrupting her story. Week 7 Black women's autobiography: how does Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands (1857) differ from the Martineau and Oliphant autobiographies? What new issues and genre influences are introduced by a Caribbean/travelogue perspective? Another key text would be Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave-Girl (1861). How representative and how individual are these texts? Do these authors see themselves as representing their race as well as their class and sex? Week 8 Working-class autobiography: Possible texts here could be John Burnett's Useful Toil (Allen Lane, 1974, Penguin reprint); Carolyn Steedman's edition of John Pearman's The Radical Soldier's Tale (Routledge, 1988) and the mini oral biographies in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861,62) (e.g., the Water-Cress Seller). There is also a new Broadview edition of Factory Lives (2007) edited by James R. Simmons, with an introduction by Janice Carlisle. This contains four substantial autobiographical texts (three male, one female) from the mid-nineteenth century, with supportive materials. Samuel Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical (1839,42; 1844) and Early Days (1847,48) are further options. Students should also read Regenia Gagnier's Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832,1910 (Oxford University Press, 1991). Week 9 Biography: Victorian Scandal: focus on two scandals emerging from Victorian life-writing: Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) (the Branwell Brontë/Lady Scott adultery scandal), and Froude's allegations of impotence in his Life of Carlyle (1884). See Trev Broughton's ,Impotence, Biography, and the Froude-Carlyle Controversy: ,Revelations on Ticklish Topics', Journal of the History of Sexuality, 7.4 (Apr. 1997): 502,36 (in addition to her Men of Letters cited above). The biographies of the Benson family written about and by each other, especially E. F. Benson's Our Family Affairs 1867,1896 (London: Cassell, 1920) reveal the domestic unhappiness of the family of Gladstone's Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, whose children and wife were all to some extent homosexual or lesbian. Another option would be Edmund Gosse's Father and Son (1907) in which the son's critical stance towards his father is uneasy and complex in its mixture of comedy, pity, shame, and resentment. Week 10 Diaries: Arthur Munby's and Hannah Cullwick's relationship (they were secretly married, but lived as master and servant) and diaries, Munby: Man of Two Worlds: The Life and Diaries of Arthur Munby, ed. Derek Hudson (John Murray, 1972), and The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick: Victorian Maidservant, ed. Liz Stanley (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984): issues of gender and class identity; the idealization of the working woman; the two diaries compared. Half the class could read one diary and half the other and engage in a debate about the social and sexual fantasies adopted by each diarist. It would also be sensible to leave time for an overview debate about the key issues of Victorian life-writing which have emerged from this module, future directions for research, and current critical developments. Focus Questions 1To what extent does Victorian autobiography tell an individual success story? Discuss with reference to two or three contrasting examples. 2,All life writing is time writing' (Jens Brockmeier). Examine the way in which Victorian life-writers handle the interplay of narrative, memory, and time. 3To what extent do you agree with the view that Victorian life-writing was ,a form of communication that appeared intimate and confessional, but which was in fact distant and controlled' (Donna Loftus)? 4,Bamford was an autobiographer who did not write an autobiography' (Martin Hewitt). If autobiography is unshaped and uninterpreted, what alternative purposes does it have in narrating a life to the reader? 5,Victorian life-writing is essentially experimental, unstable, and unpredictable.' How helpful is this comment in helping you to understand the genre? [source] Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies?LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2007Collaboration, Digital Editing, Historicism This paper forms part of a Literature Compass cluster of articles which examines the current state of Victorian Literary Studies and future directions. This group of four essays was originally commissioned by Francis O'Gorman (University of Leeds), who also provides an introduction to the cluster. The full cluster is made up of the following articles: ,Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? , Introduction', Francis O'Gorman, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00467.x. ,Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? , Revising the Canon, Extending Cultural Boundaries, and the Challenge of Interdisciplinarity', Joanne Shattock, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00468.x. ,Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? ,"Interesting Times" and the Lesson of "A Corner in Lightning"', David Amigoni, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00469.x. ,Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? , Historicism, Collaboration and Digital Editing', Valerie Sanders, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00470.x. ,Where Next in Victorian Literary Studies? , Historicism and Hospitality', John Bowen, Literature Compass 4 (2007), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2007.00471.x. *** This essay argues that, while research in Victorian Literary Studies remains rich and vibrant, it faces several types of pressure in the immediate future. These range from undergraduate resistance to reading long novels, to the funding councils' apparent preference for collaborative, interdisciplinary or large editorial projects, and proposed changes such as the Block Grants Partnership Scheme. The decline of ,feminist' in favour of ,gendered' critical approaches, and preference for generic and cultural issues over single author studies, mark a notable change of approach in the last few years. Although continuing loyalty towards historicism, and rejection of the more abstract literary theories of the 1990s, suggest that Victorian literary studies remains confident of its own direction in the next five years, the essay closes with a hope that the purely ,literary' analysis will not disappear for ever. [source] Writing the West: Critical Approaches to ShaneLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007Ruth Griffin Representations of the American West have perhaps resonated most strongly in the western film genre, yet at the same time, the literary western is a highly developed and sophisticated genre in its own right. Meanwhile, critical approaches to the West have become increasingly wide-ranging, spanning historical/literary studies; film/cultural studies; genre; gender studies; philosophy, structuralism and, most recently, post-modernism. In light of such critical diversity, this article places a literary text alongside a western film in order to illustrate and demonstrate potential critical approaches to the western. To this end it takes Jack Schaefer's novel Shane as its case study with two main organising principles in mind. Firstly, analysis of the text demonstrates the ways in which critical methods and theoretical debates can be applied to the literary western. As a result, I assess, for example, the convention which applies historical co-ordinates to fictional representations, as well as the challenges posed by alternative modes of critique. Secondly, the novel is placed alongside the filmic adaptation in order to demonstrate the fluid nature of western forms and the critical approaches which can be used to analyse them. Finally, I offer my own perspective, suggesting that the methodologies and textual forms explored in the article signal the need for trans-disciplinary critical approaches which reflect both the simplicity and the diversity of the western as a whole. [source] Gothic and the Generation of Ideas1LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2007Donna Heiland Gothic writing has remarkable generative power: as Marshall Brown has described it, gothic is a genre with what he calls a teleology, whose "significance lies in what it enabled its future readers to see, in what arguments it provoked, and . . . in what dreams it stimulated" (xix). From a brief discussion of selected early studies of the gothic, this article moves on to consider the extraordinary development of gothic criticism from the 1970s on, when the emergence of feminist and post-structuralist criticism put gothic literature on the map in a new way. Tracing the development and imbrication of the many strands of gothic criticism yields a complex and at times paradoxical picture: gothic has been read as the most rigid and formulaic of literary forms but also as centrally engaged with the notably slippery concepts of sensibility and the sublime; as escapist and as grounded in the realities of human existence; as focused on the individual psyche and as socio-cultural critique; as commenting on class, on gender, on race; as engaged with questions of national, colonial, and post-colonial identity. The field is now so well developed that guidebooks and handbooks to both primary sources and critical approaches have emerged over the last few years to codify and make it accessible. And so the question arises: have we said all that we can about this genre or can we learn still more from it? The closing portion of this article suggests that we can, pointing to gothic and religion as an area of particular interest. Religious issues have been front and center in gothic writing from its inception, and criticism to date has opened up , but hardly exhausted , this potentially rich area of research. [source] Shakespearean Editing and Why It MattersLITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 1 2005Leah Marcus A generation ago, many Shakespearean scholars simply accepted the versions of the play that they were provided with by editors. So long as the label was right , Arden, Oxford, Cambridge, Penguin, Riverside, Pelican , the content was assumed to be reliable. But editing can never be transparent , it is always influenced by the cultural assumptions of the editor and his or her era, however submerged those assumptions may be in terms of the editor's stated textual practices. In the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as a result of feminist and postcolonial critical approaches to Shakespearean texts, we have begun to realize the degree to which our inherited editions are shaped in accordance with assumptions about colonialism, race, and the status of women that are no longer acceptable to us, and that in fact distort elements of Shakespeare's plays as they exist in early printed quarto and folio versions. As earlier disciplinary boundaries between editing and criticism have broken down, Shakespearean critics have increasingly turned to editing in order to undo some of the racist and sexist assumptions behind our received texts of the plays. [source] Moral knowledge and responsibilities in evaluation implementation: When critical theory and responsive evaluation collideNEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, Issue 127 2010Melissa Freeman An external evaluation documented what occurred in an inaugural summer camp to teach high school students how to preserve religious freedom by learning about and acting on the history and current state of church,state separation and other first amendment issues. Camp designers hoped to promote religious diversity values and civic engagement in youth. An analytic vignette grounded in an inductive analysis of observations, interviews, and document collection represents the competing demands of responsive and critical approaches to evaluation. Balancing obligations to promote the social well-being of society with responsibilities to clients and other stakeholders presents challenges that can be met only by identifying priorities with clients in ongoing dialogue. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association. [source] Social Inclusion: A Philosophical Anthropology1POLITICS, Issue 2 2005Dermot O'Reilly In this article the theoretical conflations associated with the concept of social exclusion are disaggregated into a number of competing versions in terms of their social scientific and normative bases. The types of policy, analysis and critique that are engendered by these conceptions of exclusion are examined for their underlying social scientific methodology. The disjunction between positive, interpretative and critical approaches to social exclusion can only satisfactorily be broached by a methodology utilising a critical realist framework. This framework requires the integration of a theorised dialectical linkage between inclusion and exclusion. The necessary conceptual prerequisites are outlined for modelling inclusion and exclusion in a substantive, contextually sensitive manner that enables critical assessment. [source] Nonviolence and Media StudiesCOMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 2 2005Vamsee Juluri This article proposes a meeting of media studies and the philosophy of nonviolence in order to better critique the tendency in popular media discourses about war and international conflict to naturalize violence as an eternal and essential human trait. Nonviolence exposes certain foundational myths about violence in the media; namely, the myths that violence is cultural (as implied in the "clash of civilizations" thesis), historical, or natural. However, this is possible only if nonviolence is retrieved from its present marginalization as a mere technique for political activism or personal behavior and understood more accurately as a coherent, universal, practical worldview that can inform a critical engagement with media discourses of violence. Using Gandhi's writings on nonviolence, this essay aims to initiate such an understanding, particularly in connection with existing critical approaches to media violence, such as cultivation research and cultural studies, and concludes by proposing a set of concrete questions for media research based on nonviolence. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||