71 min listen
Nicholas Hengen Fox, “Reading as Collective Action: Texts as Tactics” (U Iowa Press, 2017)
Nicholas Hengen Fox, “Reading as Collective Action: Texts as Tactics” (U Iowa Press, 2017)
ratings:
Length:
39 minutes
Released:
Feb 6, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
How can reading change the world? In Reading as Collective Action: Texts as Tactics (University of Iowa Press, 2017), Nicholas Hengen Fox, who teaches literature, writing and social justice courses at Portland Community College, explores how literature can make a public impact. A timely book that speaks directly to our current political moment, Reading as Collective Action calls for a move beyond the text in itself to understand how texts are used to imagine and create another world. The potential of a world transformed is seen in the analysis of poetry’s importance after September 11th; The Grapes of Wrath, practical organizing, and the politics of redistribution in response to the great recession; along with how efforts to make texts public might transform academic institutions. The book closes by contextualizing the analysis with Habermas’ theories, offering a note of optimism. At present the book is an essential read for anyone thinking through how best to make a social, political, and aesthetic difference.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Feb 6, 2018
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008): The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historians who braves the waters of social and political criticism. One thinks of Arthur Schelsinger Jr., Richard Hofstadter, by New Books in Critical Theory