Author: David Pierce File Type: pdf Joyce and Company is a comparative study which encourages a way of thinking about Joyce not as an isolated figure but as someone who is best understood in the company of others whether from the past, the present or, indeed, the imagined future. Throughout, Pierce places Joyce and his time in dialogue with other figures or different historical periods or languages other than English. In this way, Joyce is seen anew in relation to other writers and contexts. The book is organised in four parts Joyce and History, Joyce and Language, Joyce and the City, and Joyce and the Contemporary World. Pierce emphasises Joyces position as both an Irish and a European writer and shows Joyces continuing relevance to the twenty-first century, not least in his commitment to language, culture and a discourse on freedom.**

Author: William Egginton File Type: epub A timely, provocative, necessary look at how identity politics has come to dominate college campuses and higher education in America at the expense of a more essential commitment to equality. Thirty years after the culture wars, identity politics is now the norm on college campuses-and it hasnt been an unalloyed good for our education system or the country. Though the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay pride led to profoundly positive social changes, William Egginton argues that our cultures increasingly narrow focus on individual rights puts us in a dangerous place. The goal of our education system, and particularly the liberal arts, was originally to strengthen community but the exclusive focus on individualism has led to a new kind of intolerance, degrades our civic discourse, and fatally distracts progressive politics from its commitment to equality. Egginton argues that our colleges and universities have become exclusive, expensive clubs for the cultural and economic elite instead of a national, publicly funded project for the betterment of the country. Only a return to the goals of community, and the egalitarian values underlying a liberal arts education, can head off the further fracturing of the body politic and the splintering of the American mind. With lively, on-the-ground reporting and trenchant analysis, The Splintering of the American Mind is a powerful book that is guaranteed to be controversial within academia and beyond. At this critical juncture, the book challenges higher education and every American to reengage with our history and its contexts, and to imagine our nation in new and more inclusive ways.**ReviewTimely . . . The Splintering of the American Mind examines the competing costs and benefits of the countrys continuing shift away from a commonly accepted--albeit white--canon of shared narratives to an exploration and celebration of marginalized racial and sexual identities. Egginton devotes a large section of the book to one of the most vexing problems of our time--rampant inequality of both economic and social capital--and demonstrates the complicated and sometimes inadvertent ways in which our winner-take-all higher education system exacerbates and locks this in. - New York Times Book ReviewProvocative . . . Eggintons pot-stirring prose . . . will delight some readers and rile others, but his book will interest anyone wanting a better sense of the current mood surrounding American higher education. - Publishers WeeklyAn eloquent and moving defense of higher educations contribution to the public good. Insisting that identity politics isnt the enemy of community, and democracy is still a revolutionary idea, he steps nimbly around eitheror choices, pointing the way forward to a more truly equitable campus--and country. - Laura Kipnis, author of UNWANTED ADVANCESAn incisive and nuanced diagnosis of the ruptures in our society that so challenge higher education today. His call for a universal experience of the liberal arts as essential to democracy is as compelling as any I have seen. - Adam Falk, President of the Alfred P. Sloan FoundationThe Splintering of the American Mind challenges all those working in higher education to return to first principles. Egginton offers constructive criticism delivered with wit, learning, and a welcome glimpse at where the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s wound up, even as his account points in helpful new directions. - Christopher S. Celenza, Ph.D., Dean of Georgetown College at Georgetown UniversityA compassionate clarion call for academia to help reconstruct a national community sundered by divisions of class, geography, and education. He provides a convincing blueprint for how educators can promote community through changes in curriculum, particularly through a re-emphasis on the humanities, and public policy. - David Goldfield, Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History and author of THE GIFTED GENERATIONA must-read book. For anyone concerned about the state of modern America and Higher Educations role in it, Egginton provides an artful and passionate plea for America to revive its public sphere, and to renew our collective sense of commonwealth. Challenging all viewpoints and taking no prisoners, there is a dynamic and arresting urgency to his prose. - Ben Vinson III, Dean, Columbian College of Arts & Sciences, George Washington University, and author of BEFORE MESTIZAJEAbout the Author William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities and director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at the Johns Hopkins University. His highly praised books include How the World Became a Stage, The Theater of Truth, The Philosophers Desire, and The Man Who Invented Fiction. He regularly writes for the New York Times online forum The Stone, the LA Review of Books, and Stanford Universitys Arcade. Egginton lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and Vienna, Austria, with his family.