From Hesiod to Saussure, from Hippocrates to Jevons: An Introduction to the History of Scientific Thought between Iran and the Atlantic

This work offers an introduction to the history of scientific thought in the region between Iran and the Atlantic from the beginnings of the Bronze Age until 1900 CE—a “science” that can be understood more or less as a German Wissenschaft: a coherent body of knowledge carried by a socially organized group or profession. It thus deals with the social and human as well as medical and natural sciences and, in earlier times, even such topics as astrology and exorcism. It discusses eight periods or knowledge cultures: Ancient Mesopotamia – classical Antiquity – Islamic Middle Ages – Latin Middle Ages – Western Europe 1400–1600 – 17th century – 18th century – 19th century. For each period, a general description of scientific thought is offered, embedded within its social context, together with a number of shorter or longer commented extracts from original works in English translation

Taylor University Catalog 2017-2018

The 2017-2018 academic catalog of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.https://pillars.taylor.edu/catalogs/1000/thumbnail.jp

Taylor University Catalog 2007-2008

The 2007-2008 academic catalog of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana.https://pillars.taylor.edu/catalogs/1010/thumbnail.jp

Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics and Pedagogy of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich in the Era of Open Admissions

Insurgent Knowledge analyzes the reciprocal relations between teaching and literature in the work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom taught in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) educational opportunity program at the City University of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on archival research and analysis of their published work, I show how feminist aesthetics have shaped U.S. education (especially student-centered pedagogical practices) and how classroom encounters with students had a lasting impact on our postwar literary landscape and theories of difference. My project demonstrates how, for these teacher-poets, creative work and teaching were interrelated efforts to galvanize students, readers, and audiences in the production of a more just, equitable, and pleasurable world. In doing so, I illuminate the centrality of aesthetic education to processes of social change: how encounters with art and artmaking (poiesis) can help us interrogate common sense, unlearn dominant pedagogies, retrain our viscera, and think beyond the status quo. The materials analyzed in this project include unpublished archival teaching materials—syllabi, lesson plans, assignments, lecture notes—housed at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe and Spelman College and published literature and essays from the period 1965-2002. Through close examination of these texts, I show how these teacher-poets developed pedagogies of social justice deeply influenced by their experiences teaching in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with particular attentiveness to the longstanding influence of educational opportunity programs and Open Admissions in their work. These materials and questions necessitated an interdisciplinary approach that draws on the methods of women of color feminism, urban education studies, critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and literary analysis. Building upon recent research in critical university studies, this project constructs a genealogy of feminist poet-teachers as leaders of pedagogical, institutional, and social change. Each chapter analyzes the pedagogies that emerge from one author’s literary and educational texts. I show how aesthetic education can contribute to ongoing struggles for social justice and material redistribution: by denaturalizing common sense and altering our social consciousness; through place-based local research assignments that help students locate their seemingly idiosyncratic experiences in relation to collective histories and institutional structures; by challenging students to participate in the formal construction of their learning environments including the content, methods, and means by which their learning will be assessed; by teaching collaboration; and by having students write for audiences beyond the classroom (including publishing their work in anthologies). These pedagogies, I argue, demonstrate ways to navigate and contest the privatization of knowledge and power that has come to dominate educational practice

A semiotic perspective on the positive transfer of L1 structure in second language instruction

Language educators are re-examining the benefits of positive transfer. As the usage of the term language interference is misleading, the benefits of positive transfer have not been fully recognized until recently. When considered from a semiotic perspective with reference to language acquisition, neurolinguistic and applied linguistic theories, language interference can be perceived as a symptom of equivocal signs. It is proposed that student's learner errors may be attributed to a phenomenon called `semiotic confusion', which is a specific state of disorientation caused by a misinterpretation of signs. Consequently, language interference is redefined as a symptom of `semiotic confusion'. A hypothetical model, the Personal Semiotic Cultural Consciousness/ Semiotic Cultural Consciousness (PSCC/SCC), which is composed of two competing states of consciousness that correspond with synthetic and analytic brain functioning provides instructors with insights about the importance of activating their students' internal and external semiotic cultural consciousness through somatosensory signs such as colour