Personal Effects

by Holdstein, Deborah H.; Bleich, David

• ISBN13: 9780874214291
• ISBN10: 0874214297
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-01
• Publisher: Utah State Univ Pr

Summary

Holdstein and Bleich compile a volume that cuts across the grain of current orthodoxy. These editors and contributors argue that it is fundamental in humanistic scholarship to take account of the personal and collective experiences of scholars, researchers, critics, and teachers. They contend that humanistic inquiry cannot develop successfully at this time without reference to the varieties of subjective, inter-subjective, and collective experience of teachers and researchers. In composition studies, they point out, an important strand of theory has continuously mined the personal experience of individual writers ("where they stand" even in a destabilised sense of that idea). "[S]uch substantive accounts of the 'inner' academic life provide appropriate and rich contexts for further study and analysis." With this volume, then, these scholars move us to explore the intersections of the social with subjectivity, with voice, ideology, and culture, and to consider the roles of these in the work of academics who study writing and literature. Taken together, the essays in this collection carry forward the idea that the personal, the candidly subjective and inter-subjective, must be part of the subject of study in humanities scholarship. They propose an understanding of the personal in scholarship that is more helpful because more clearly anchored in human experience.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Recognizing the Human in the Humanities	1	(26)
David Bleich
Deborah H. Holdstein
I IDEALS AND CAUTIONS
Scholarly Memoir: An Un-``Professional'' Practice	27	(24)
Margaret Willard-Traub
In the Name of the Subject: Some Recent Versions of the Personal	51	(28)
Jeffrey Gray
II SELF-INCLUSION IN LITERARY SCHOLARSHIP
Radical Introspection: The Personal in Scholarship and Teaching	79	(14)
Brenda Daly
Loss, Memory, and the Work of Learning: Lessons From the Teaching Life of Anne Sexton	93	(28)
Paula M. Salvio
III TEACHING AND SCHOLARSHIP FACE TO FACE
``Knowledge Has a Face'': The Jewish, The Personal, and the Pedagogical	121	(24)
Susan Handelman
Who Was that Masked Author? The Faces of Academic Editing	145	(20)
Louise Z. Smith
IV TEACHING AND SCHOLARSHIP PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
Autobiography: The Mixed Genre of Public and Private	165	(13)
Madeleine R. Grumet
The Social Construction of Expressivist Pedagogy	178	(21)
Karen Surman Paley
The Scope of Personal Writing in Postsecondary English Pedagogy	199	(21)
Diane P. Freedman
Personal Experience Paper	220	(12)
Rachel Brownstein
``The World Never Ends'': Professional Judgments at Home, Abroad	232	(21)
Joycelyn K. Moody
V THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Learning to Take it Personally	253	(14)
Kate Ronald
Hephzibah Roskelly
Cuentos de mi Historia: An Art of Memory	267	(10)
Victor Villanueva
Personal Landmarks on Pedagogical Landscapes	277	(19)
Katya Gibel Azoulay
The Anxiety and Nostalgia of Literacy: A Narrative about Race, Language, and a Teaching Life	296	(21)
Morris Young
Where I'm Coming From: Memory, Location, and the (Un) Making of National Subjectivity	317	(18)
Christopher Castiglia
The Personal as History	335	(22)
Richard Ohmann
References	357	(20)
Contributors	377	(4)
Index	381