Bryn Mawr Faculty
Bread and Circus
by Airea D Matthews
Author's website: www.aireadee.com
Drawing upon economics, theology, and psychology, Bread and Circus explores the lived experiences of those impacted by poverty and racial injustice. This poetry collection is innovative not only in its dissection of established ideals but also in its experimentation with poetic form, with a highlight being blackout poems made by subverting key words in economic texts. The final section of the collection is an especially moving series on collective grief and hope.
-Alyssa S., GSSWSR '24
Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel
by Pardis Dabashi
Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership
by Alison Cook-Sather, Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor, Department of Education
Faculty and staff in higher education are looking for ways to address the deep inequity and systemic racism that pervade our colleges and universities. Pedagogical partnership can be a powerful tool to enhance equity, inclusion, and justice in our classrooms and curricula. These partnerships create opportunities for students from underrepresented and equity-seeking groups to collaborate with faculty and staff to revise and reinvent pedagogies, assessments, and course designs, positioning equity and justice as core educational aims. When students have a seat at the table, previously unheard voices are amplified, and diversity and difference introduce essential perspectives that are too often overlooked.
In particular, the book contributes to the literature on pedagogical partnership and equity in education by integrating theory, synthesizing research, and providing concrete examples of the ways partnership can contribute to more equitable educational systems. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that partnership can only realize its full potential to redress harms and promote equity and justice when thoughtfully enacted. This book is a resource that will inspire and challenge a wide variety of higher education faculty and staff and contribute to advancing both practice and research on the potential of student-faculty pedagogical partnerships.
Presenting a conceptual framework for understanding the various epistemological, affective, and ontological harms that face students from equity-seeking groups in postsecondary education, Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership applies this conceptual framework to current literature in partnerships, highlighting the promise of partnership as the way to redress these harms.
The authors ground both the conceptual framework and the literature review by offering two case studies of pedagogical partnership in practice. They then explore the complexities raised by their framework, including the conditions under which partnerships themselves may risk reproducing epistemic, affective, or ontological harms. Applying the framework in this way allows them to propose strategies that make it more likely for these mediations to be successful.
Finally, the authors focus on the future of pedagogical partnership and share their perspectives on new directions for inquiry and practice. After summarizing the overarching themes developed throughout the book, the authors leave the reader with a set of questions and recommendations for further inquiry and discussion.
Cambridge Companion to Gadamer
by Robert Dostal, Rufus M. Jones Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this volume examine Gadamer's biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer's appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism. This revised edition includes several new chapters on aspects of Gadamer's work, as well as updated chapters from the first edition and the most comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Gadamer available in the English language.
Gadamer's Hermeneutics
by Robert Dostal, Rufus M. Jones Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy
In Gadamer's HermeneuticsRobert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive and critical account of Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy, arguing that Gadamer's enterprise is rooted in the thesis that "being that can be understood is language." He defends Gadamer against charges of linguistic idealism and emphasizes language's relationship to understanding, though he criticizes Gadamer for too often ignoring the role of the prelinguistic in our experience. Dostal goes on to explain the concept of the "inner word" for Gadamer's account of language.
The book situates Gadamer's hermeneutics in three important ways: in relation to the contestability of the legacy of the Enlightenment project; in relation to the work of his mentor, Martin Heidegger; and in relation to Gadamer's reading of Plato and Aristotle. Dostal explores both Gadamer's claim on the Enlightenment and his ambivalence toward it. He considers Gadamer's dependence on Heidegger's accomplishment while pointing out the ways in which Gadamer charted his own course, rejecting his teacher's reading of Plato and his antihumanism. Dostal points out notable differences in the philosophers' politics as well. Finally, Dostal mediates between Gadamer's hermeneutics and what might be called philological hermeneutics. His analysis defends the civic humanism that is the culmination of the philosopher's hermeneutics, a humanism defined by moral education, common sense, judgment, and taste. Supporters and critics of Gadamer's philosophy will learn much from this major achievement.
Queer Budapest, 1873-1961
by Anita Kurimay
Soviet Films of the 1970s and Early 1980s
by Tim Harte, Professor, Department of Russian, and Marina Rojavin, Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian
This book explores a new character archetype that permeated Soviet film during what became known as the era of Stagnation, a stark period of loneliness, disappointment, and individual despair. This new type of character was neither negative nor positive, but nevertheless systematically undermined Soviet norms of behaviour, hairstyle, dress, lifestyle, and perspective, in stark contrast to Socialist Realism's traditional, positive hero who fought for Soviet values and who vanquished the enemies of socialism. The book discusses a wide range of films from the period, showing how the new antiheroic archetype of Stagnation resonated through a multitude of characters, mostly male, and vividly reflected the realities of Soviet life. The book thereby provides great insight into the lives, outlook, and psychology of citizens in the late Soviet period.
Perfect Copies
by Shiamin Kwa
Herodotus in the Anthropocene
by Joel Alden Schlosser
Art of Cloth in Mughal India
by Sylvia Houghteling, Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art
A richly illustrated history of textiles in the Mughal Empire
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a vast array of textiles circulated throughout the Mughal Empire. Made from rare fibers and crafted using virtuosic techniques, these exquisite objects animated early modern experience, from the intimate, sensory pleasure of garments to the monumentality of imperial tents. The Art of Cloth in Mughal India tells the story of textiles crafted and collected across South Asia and beyond, illuminating how cloth participated in political negotiations, social conversations, and the shared seasonal rhythms of the year. Drawing on small-scale paintings, popular poetry, chronicle histories, and royal inventory records, Sylvia Houghteling charts the travels of textiles from the Mughal imperial court to the kingdoms of Rajasthan, the Deccan sultanates, and the British Isles. She shows how the "art of cloth" encompassed both the making of textiles as well as their creative uses. Houghteling asks what cloth made its wearers feel, how it acted in space, and what images and memories it conjured in the mind. She reveals how woven objects began to evoke the natural environment, convey political and personal meaning, and span the distance between faraway people and places. Beautifully illustrated, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India offers an incomparable account of the aesthetics and techniques of cloth and cloth making and the ways that textiles shaped the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia.