Full Description
The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope brings together a number of winners of the Polanyi Prize in Literature - a group whose research constitutes a diversity of methodological approaches to the study of culture - to examine the rich but often troubled association between the concepts of the public, the intellectual (both the person and the condition), culture, and hope. The contributors probe the influence of intellectual life on the public sphere by reflecting on, analyzing, and re-imagining social and cultural identity.
The Public Intellectual and the Culture of Hope reflects on the challenging and often vexed work of intellectualism within the public sphere by exploring how cultural materials - from foundational Enlightenment writings to contemporary, populist media spectacles - frame intellectual debates within the clear and ever-present gaze of the public writ large. These serve to illuminate how past cultures can shed light on present and future issues, as well as how current debates can reframe our approaches to older subjects.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword (John Polanyi, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry)
Introduction: Public Hopes (Joel Faflak: University of Western Ontario, English and Jason Haslam: Dalhousie University, English)
Part One: Public Readings
1. "Maga-Scenes: Performing Periodical Literature in the 1820s"
(Angela Esterhammer: Principal of Victoria College, Professor of English, University of Toronto)
2. "'A Wicked Whisper': Censorship and Affect in Coleridge's 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'"
(Julia M. Wright: Dalhousie University, English)
3. "Sense and Sensibility: Anatomies of Hope in Romantic-Century Medical Pedagogy"
(James Allard: Brock University, English Language and Literature)
4. "'I know the difference between what I see and what I only want to see':Remembering India's Partition through Children in Cracking India"
(Nandi Bhatia: University of Western Ontario, English)
Part Two: Public Performances
5. "Margaret Cavendish's Civilizing Songs"
(Katherine R. Larson: University of Toronto, English)
6. "Get Happy! American Film Musicals and the Political Technology of Utopianism"
(Joel Faflak: University of Western Ontario, English)
7. "To Be (Or Not To Be): Ernst Lubitsch's Irrepressible Theatrical Liberalism"
(Andrea Most: University of Toronto, English, American Literature and Jewish Studies)
8. "Inglourious Criticism, Basterd Fantasies: RanciÈre, Tarantino and the Intellectual Spectacle of Hope"
(Jason Haslam: Dalhousie University, English)
Part Three: Public Matters
9. "Beyond the Book: Reading as Public Intellectual Activity"
(Daniel Coleman: McMaster University, English and Cultural Studies)
10. "The Political Nature of Things: David Suzuki and the Canadian Public"
(Imre Szeman: University of Alberta, English and Film Studies)
11. "The Immaterial Matters"
(R. Darren Gobert: York University, English)
12. "Higher Education and the End(s) of Time"
(Patrick Deane: President and vice-chancellor of McMaster University)
List of Contributors
Index
