American Academic Cultures

Education / By /
American Academic Cultures

Author: Paul H. Mattingly

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 9780226505435

Category: Education

Page: 464

View: 103

At a time when American higher education seems ever more to be reflecting on its purpose and potential, we are more inclined than ever to look to its history for context and inspiration. But that history only helps, Paul H. Mattingly argues, if it’s seen as something more than a linear progress through time. With American Academic Cultures, he offers a different type of history of American higher learning, showing how its current state is the product of different, varied generational cultures, each grounded in its own moment in time and driven by historically distinct values that generated specific problems and responses. Mattingly sketches out seven broad generational cultures: evangelical, Jeffersonian, republican/nondenominational, industrially driven, progressively pragmatic, internationally minded, and the current corporate model. What we see through his close analysis of each of these cultures in their historical moments is that the politics of higher education, both inside and outside institutions, are ultimately driven by the dominant culture of the time. By looking at the history of higher education in this new way, Mattingly opens our eyes to our own moment, and the part its culture plays in generating its politics and promise.

American Academic Culture in Transformation

Education / By /
American Academic Culture in Transformation

Author: Thomas Bender

Publisher: Princeton University Press

ISBN: 9780691227832

Category: Education

Page: 370

View: 279

In the half century since World War II, American academic culture has changed profoundly. Until now, those changes have not been charted, nor have their implications for current discussions of the academy been appraised. In this book, however, eminent academic figures who have helped to produce many of the changes of the last fifty years explore how four disciplines in the social sciences and humanities--political science, economics, philosophy, and literary studies--have been transformed. Edited by the distinguished historians Thomas Bender and Carl Schorske, the book places academic developments in their intellectual and socio-political contexts. Scholarly innovators of different generations offer insiders' views of the course of change in their own fields, revealing the internal dynamics of disciplinary change. Historians examine the external context for these changes--including the Cold War, Vietnam, feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism. They also compare the very different paths the disciplines have followed within the academy and the consequent alterations in their relations to the larger public. Initiated by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the study was first published in Daedalus in its 1997 winter issue. The contributors are M. H. Abrams, William Barber, Thomas Bender, Catherine Gallagher, Charles Lindblom, Robert Solow, David Kreps, Hilary Putnam, José David Saldívar, Alexander Nehamas, Rogers Smith, Carl Schorske, Ira Katznelson, and David Hollinger.

God, Philosophy, and Academic Culture

Religion / By /
God, Philosophy, and Academic Culture

Author: William J. Wainwright

Publisher:

ISBN: UVA:X004106175

Category: Religion

Page: 108

View: 525

A striking feature of the current philosophical scene is the division between those philosophers of religion primarily associated with the American Philosophical Association and those primarily associated with the American Academy of Religion. This difference is loosely correlated with twoothers: the comparative dominance of analytic philosophy in the APA and of hermeneutical philosophy in the AAR, and the greater visibility of traditional theists in the APA. In this book eight prominent philosophers of religion from these organizations explore the historical, cultural, andphilosophical roots of these differences, their connections, and the prospects for rapprochement.

Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count

Psychology / By /
Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count

Author: Richard E. Nisbett

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN: 9780393071412

Category: Psychology

Page: 320

View: 224

“[Nisbett] weighs in forcefully and articulately . . . [using] a thoroughly appealing style to engage . . . throughout.”—Publishers Weekly Who are smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for group differences in test scores? From the damning research of The Bell Curve to the more recent controversy surrounding geneticist James Watson’s statements, one factor has been consistently left out of the equation: culture. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, world-class social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett takes on the idea of intelligence as biologically determined and impervious to culture with vast implications for the role of education as it relates to social and economic development. Intelligence and How to Get It asserts that intellect is not primarily genetic but is principally determined by societal influences.

Immigrant Women of the Academy

Minority women educators / By /
Immigrant Women of the Academy

Author: Mary V. Alfred

Publisher:

ISBN: UOM:39015061458785

Category: Minority women educators

Page: 302

View: 672

This book is about immigrant women of colour in the US and particularly in the ivory tower. Collectively, the narratives in the book strive to further the discourse regarding the multiple interrelationships of identity, culture, self, others, pedagogy, and institutions of higher education. The accounts that follow describe what it means to be a transnational student, professor, scholar, and administrator within the contested terrain of higher education. The women in this book have experienced the halls of academe in different ways, not always as faculty at a research university. The narratives are organised geographically and draw out the experiences of the third wave of immigrants coming from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean (or West Indies), and Latin America. This book brings together the multidimensional voices of immigrant women of colour to chronicle the immigrant experience in the United States.

The University in a Corporate Culture

Business & Economics / By /
The University in a Corporate Culture

Author: Eric Gould

Publisher: Yale University Press

ISBN: 9780300087062

Category: Business & Economics

Page: 263

View: 842

Over the past century, higher education in the United States has developed an increasingly powerful corporate ethos, as institutions compete for students, faculty, and funding. This book examines how the liberal democratic principles driving higher education often conflict with market pressures to credential students and offer knowledge that has a clear exchange value. Eric Gould, who has been both academician and college administrator, argues that the failure to structure the curriculum so that it integrates responsible social idealism and humanism with economic and cultural needs constitutes the moral crisis of the university. Gould analyzes the economics and politics of higher education, showing how student consumerism, culture wars, faculty alienation, trustee activism, and a split between the concepts of "culture" and "society" have all resulted from the unholy alliance between pragmatism, corporatism, and liberalism in higher education. He asserts that what is needed is a general education for undergraduates that promotes the ability to critique power relations (including those within higher education) so that students can understand how social forces--and their embodiment of ideas, ideologies, and claims for truth--shape contemporary public philosophy.