Browsing by Subject "Criticism"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    An autoethnography of working-class education
    (2013-04) Moyer, Krista E.
    This thesis tells the story of the author's elementary and secondary education in public school in southwestern Pennsylvania, through anecdotes and first-person narration. In analytical chapters, the author examines the events through the lens of critical literacy education theories, including those of Paolo Freire, Valerie Walkerdine, Timothy Lensmire, and others. With a particular emphasis on the ways in which social class influenced her education, she also examines the effect of the label "gifted" on her educational outcomes, including her participation in the Pennsylvania Governor's School program for intellectually gifted students. She concludes by considering the importance of education in the lives of working-class students who will not pursue intellectual career paths and offers advice to teachers for reaching these students.
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    Erich Auerbach – Antihero of Criticism
    (2024-08) Meutzner, Moritz
    Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) is indisputably one of the most important figures in the history of twentieth-century criticism. The historical place of his legacy, however, is anything but clearly defined. As a result of the remarkable impact of his 1946 masterpiece Mimesis and other works since the postwar era, as well as a repeated attention to his exilic biography between Turkey (1936–1947) and the US (1947–1957), Auerbach has become not only a canonic figure in the field of literary and cultural studies, but also the subject of a highly ambiguous and often conflicted history of reception. My dissertation turns to this reception and asks for the discursive-historical place that emerges from it for Auerbach as assigned from today’s perspective. As I argue, this place is on the one hand delineated by the high esteem Auerbach’s legacy continues to hold, while on the other hand defined by the frequent interrogation of this value and a recurring sense of unease with Auerbach’s work, receiving its historical specificity by the depiction of Auerbach’s legacy as either imperiled (underappreciated) or to be further displaced (lacking, or not ‘enough’). Like the antihero in modern drama, Auerbach appears to occupy a center, the legitimacy of which is perennially put into question. Understood in this way, Auerbach emerges not only as a discursive ‘figure,’ but also as a gauge and barometer for the conflicts and turning points of criticism. My dissertation unfolds this reading of Auerbach in three chapters. Chapter 1 examines the methodological origins of his work in the early 1920s against the backdrop of its critique as transgressing traditional scholarship towards the realm of art, highlighting Auerbach’s quest for models of historical accuracy beyond the positivist legacy of the nineteenth century. Chapter 2 examines the understanding of Auerbach’s method as based on models of Christian-figural reading as expressed specifically around the 2000s, suggesting that such interpretation may reflect less of Auerbach’s methodology than of the fading reception of his work in the context of the symptomatic tradition. In Chapter 3, I turn to Auerbach as a case for examining Jewish and postcolonial history in critical relation to each other, surveying Auerbach’s frequent ‘exclusions’ from both fields and suggesting a reading of his work as reflective of the interconnectedness of both histories. In the afterword, I reflect on Auerbach’s audience as –in a Brechtian sense– co-producers of his ‘unfinished’ work and ask for the prospect of his reception in the twenty-first century.
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    Sovereign Language: The Rhetoric of the Terror War Presidents
    (2017-08) Hiland, Alexander
    In the years following the September 11 attacks Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama expanded the power of the presidency to pursue the terror wars. This project explains how this was accomplished by performing a rhetorical criticism of the signing statements, executive orders, and presidential policy directives issued by both of the terror war Presidents. Drawing on insights from scholarship on the rhetorical presidency this project argues that the expansion of presidential powers is best understood as an attempt to incorporate the practices of public address into the exercise of personal power by the President. The implications of this tactic are manifest in the policies produced to pursue the terror wars, including enhanced interrogation, indefinite detention, continuous undeclared wars, mass surveillance, as well as other abuses of human dignity. The powers afforded to the terror war Presidents to pursue these policies have had a detrimental impact not only on the Constitution, but on the democratic practices of the United States. This project argues that the only hope for substantive change will be a fundamental change between the presidency and the public. The presentation will focus on the use of signing statements by both President George W. Bush and Obama to defend and end the practice of indefinite detention. Against legislative efforts to oppose both Presidents by Congress, both Presidents asserted the primacy of the presidency in determining how detained persons ought to be treated and how the terror wars would be fought. Although there are important policy differences between these two Presidents, they shared a commitment to defending the power of the presidency that caused both to circumvent the dictates of Congress. This example represents a microcosm of the broader trends in the presidency during the terror wars toward affording the presidency a sovereign position to unilaterally dictate policy for the country.