‘What Can We Learn About Education from a Post-Critical Reading of Experimental Literature?’

17:30pm – 19:00pm
Live online event via Microsoft Teams
 
Abstract 
This session examines Felski’s call for a post-critical approach to engaging with literature. It considers how we might apply this approach to our own educational practices, as well as its possible limitations. I will first briefly outline the conventional ways by which we engage with texts and ideas, in line with what Felski (quoting Ricoeur) calls the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. In response to this, Felski offers a new way in which to approach texts, in part through reconceptualising the text as an agent who both responds and is responded to by readers. Participants will be invited to explore excerpts from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, where two such orientations to the text are explored – namely, critique and post-critique. In short, we will collaboratively test the extent to which we can attune ourselves to texts in the ways that Felski suggests – in other words, to sit ‘in front of a text, reflecting on what it unfurls, calls forth, makes possible’ – or rather, the extent to which we are inevitably primed towards methods of critique.
 
Speaker
Alison M. Bradyis a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the UCL Institute of Education. Her recently completed PhD focused on Sartrean existentialism and aimed to account for practices in ways that are existentially sensitive to the concrete, lived realities of education. More recently, Alison has become interested in the intersection between literature, philosophy and education. For this, she is working on her second book which looks at the relationship between education and the existential novel, due to be published as part of the ‘Literature and Education’ Routledge series. Alison is also interested in using literature as a means to explore and better account for concrete educational issues, such as mental health. She has recently published an article on this in the Journal for Philosophy of Education, entitled ‘Mental Health, Resilience, and Existential Literature’.

Note from the organisers
In order to ensure active participation in the seminar, participants will be sent short extracts on registering for the event.
 
To register for this event, please click here

For further information, please contact alexis.gibbs@winchester.ac.uk or adrian.skilbeck@winchester.ac.uk