Traversing the Democratic Borders of the Essay

by Kirklighter, Cristina; Okawa, Gail Y.

• ISBN13: 9780791454671
• ISBN10: 0791454673
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Scholarship on the personal essay has focused on Western European and U. S. varieties of the form. In Traversing the Democratic Borders of the Essay, Cristina Kirklighter extends these boundaries by reading the Latin-American and Latino/a essayists Paulo Freire, Victor Villanueva, and Ruth Behar, alongside such canonical figures as Montaigne, Bacon, Emerson, and Thoreau. In this fascinating journey into the commonalities and differences among these essayists, Kirklighter focuses on various elements of the personal essay -- self-reflexivity, accessibility, spontaneity, and a rhetoric of sincerity -- in order to argue for a more democratic form of writing in academia, one that would democratize the academy and promote nation-building. By using these elements in their teachings and writings, Kirklighter argues, educators can play a significant role in helping others who experience academic alienation achieve a better sense of belonging as they slowly dismantle the walls of the ivory tower.

Author Biography

Cristina Kirklighter is Assistant Professor of English at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
The Personal, the Political, and the Rhetorical: Montaigne's and Bacon's Use of the Essay Form	p. 10
Essaying an American Democratic Identity in Emerson and Thoreau	p. 11
The Essay as Political/Cultural Critique in Latin America	p. 11
Achieving a Place in Academia through the Personal Academic Essays of Victor Villanueva and Ruth Behar	p. 12
The Personal, the Political, and the Rhetorical: Montaigne and Bacon's Use of the Essay Form	p. 15
Brief Biography of Michel de Montaigne	p. 17
Montaigne's Departure from Traditional Rhetorical Writing	p. 18
Francis Bacon and the Essay	p. 34
Essaying an American Democratic Identity in Emerson and Thoreau	p. 39
Ralph Waldo Emerson	p. 43
Biographical Background	p. 43
Montaigne, Plutarch, Emerson, and the Essay	p. 45
The Essay, Education, and the Formation of a U.S. National Identity	p. 51
Emerson and "The American Scholar"	p. 52
Henry David Thoreau	p. 58
Historical and Political Background of Walden	p. 62
Early Book Reviews of Walden and Its Significance to the Essay	p. 65
The Essay as Political/Cultural Critique in Latin America	p. 71
Freire's Place in Latin American History	p. 79
Freire's Social Pedagogy and Its Tie to the Elements of the Essay	p. 81
Freire's Pedagogical Ties to Self-Reflection in the Essay	p. 81
Accessible Writing and the Freirian Essay	p. 86
Freire and the Issue of Spontaneity	p. 92
The Essay's Elements of Sincerity and Truthfulness in Freire's Writings	p. 96
Achieving a Place in Academia through the Personal Academic Essays of Victor Villanueva and Ruth Behar	p. 103
Conversations with Victor Villanueva on Bootstraps and His Influence in Rhetoric and Composition	p. 106
Villanueva's Use of Self-Reflection and Accessibility in Bootstraps	p. 108
The Movement from Mimicry to Spontaneity in Villanueva's Academic Writings	p. 114
Sincerity and Acceptance in Villanueva's Scholarship	p. 117
Ruth Behar and Her Rise to Academic Prominence	p. 122
Behar's Use of Self-Reflexivity and Accessibility to Reconcile Her Ethnographic Identity in Academia	p. 124
Spontaneity and the Essay: Behar's Growing Resistance to Becoming a Translated Academic	p. 128
Behar's Use of Sincere Writing to Uncover Her Truth as an Ethnographer	p. 130
Conclusion	p. 133
Works Cited	p. 137
Index	p. 149
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.