Writing at the end of the world
Edition: 1 edition
Series: Pittsburgh series in composition, literacy, and culture
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: October 28, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9780822958864
Subjects: Higher & further education; Violence in society; Study and teaching (Higher); Literature - Classics / Criticism; English language; Education; Education / Teaching; Study and teaching; Higher; Rhetoric; Philosophy & Social Aspects; Language Arts & Disciplines / Composition & Creative Writing; Education, Humanistic; United States; Report writing
Description: "What do the humanities have to offer in the twenty-first century? Are there compelling reasons to go on teaching the literate arts when the schools themselves have become battlefields? Does it make sense to go on writing when the world itself is overrun with books that no one reads? In these simultaneously personal and erudite reflections on the future of higher education, Richard E. Miller moves from the headlines to the classroom, focusing in on how teachers and students alike confront the existential challenge of making life meaningful. In meditating on the violent events that now dominate our daily lives - school shootings, suicide bombings, terrorist attacks, contemporary warfare - Miller prompts a reconsideration of the role that institutions of higher education play in shaping our daily experiences, and asks us to reimagine the humanities as centrally important to the maintenance of a compassionate, secular society. By concentrating on those moments when individuals and institutions meet and violence results, Writing at the End of the World provides the framework that students and teachers require to engage in the work of building a better future."--Jacket.
Table of contents: title: The dark night of the soul; title: The nervous system; title: Smart bomb; title: Falling bodies : cleaning up after the apocalypse; title: The arts of complicity; title: Educating Charlie : fraudulence and the liberal arts; title: Speaking with the dead