On the pedagogy of 'small wars'

This article argues that flawed western strategies for 'small wars', those fought in the non—European world, have been informed by illusions concerning the cultural, military and political superiority of the West. With 9/11, such wars ceased to be small. The main threat to the western powers no longer emanates from other states organized along lines similar to their own, but from a transnational network enterprise that has its origins in the global South and the Islamic world. Nonetheless, old imperial and orientalist constructions continue to inform western and particularly US perceptions of the war on terror. 'Knowing thy enemy' and 'knowing thyself', Sun Tzu's formula for victory, requires abandoning flattering accounts of western identity and learning to empathize with those we call terrorists.     

Genre-based pedagogy in TEM-4 reading class

This thesis aims to elaborate genre-based pedago-gy in reading class of TEM-4 (Test for English Major Band 4). It systematically explains the theories of genre-based pedagogy. Moreover, it shows how ge...     

Forgetting the Past

Based on arguments developed more fully in the author's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (2006), this article urges historians of women and gender to develop a richer appreciation of the distant past. The article uses data from recent conferences and journals to demonstrate that our field is now overly focused on the modern era, and especially the last century. Then, in the spirit of encouraging further discussion and debate, the article lays out some reasons for this contemporary tilt, some ways we might right the balance and some benefits of doing just that.     

Constructing the Past

Ronald L. Grimes. Symbol and Conquest: Public Ritual and Drama in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976. 281 pp. $16.50.     

车过东原山(组诗)

1.细节或轮廓到底是谁的执意让我这么多次穿梭于东原山之间下午的普屯沟阳光在理念中隐没车身摇晃许多人在温度里埋掉了名字烟蒂苹果孩子哭剪断的票根隔开你和我的车程上升的空间下降的世界柏油路把曲线移给车轮村庄便成为回环的典故收留我吧一只鸟在天空呓语寓言在大地上铺开玻璃隔绝了空气与交流悬在半空中更多的人在分享石头的昏睡躲在车窗的背后我伸出手举起一生的才能将灵魂从拥挤的车箱中搬离鸟儿羽化成水天空成为我们惟一的岸我像是在世界的另一处看见过这个世界守望中目睹了时间将苔藓和水迹编织在墓碑里留给没有历史的人翻阅2.写意…     

Evidence for the Past

Book reviewed in this article:
The What and the Why of History: Philosophical Essays By Leon J. Goldstein     

Struggling with the Past

Many postprocessual archaeologists have argued that active individuals make history. The apotheosis of the individual has been achieved under the rubric identity, the most pervasive theoretical term of the last few years. This focus obscures the fundamental idea that individuals do not exist in isolation. The relational concept of struggle will help us past this theoretical impasse. This concept has many components including real struggles in the past, our struggles to know the past, and using the past to struggle in the present. Our goal is to struggle past identity politics and the individual by focusing on peoples' real struggles in real cases.     

Becoming public: public pedagogy,citizenship and the public sphere

This paper explores the question what kind of educational work can be done in attempts to reclaim or reinvigorate the public sphere. Through a discussion of the intersection of public sphere and public space, it engages with the work of Hannah Arendt in order to outline a conception of the public sphere as a space for civic action based on distance and the conservation of a degree strangeness rather than on commonality and common identity. The discussion of the educational work that can be done to support the public quality of common spaces and places focuses on three interpretations of the idea of public pedagogy: that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy for the public, that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy of the public and that of public pedagogy as the enactment of a concern for the public quality of human togetherness. The latter form of public pedagogy neither teaches nor erases the political by bringing it under a regime of learning, but rather opens up the possibility for forms of human togetherness through which freedom can appear, that is forms of human togetherness which contribute to the ‘becoming public’ of spaces and places.