Editor's Note
- Editor’s Note
The thematic essays in this issue on The Sites of Pedagogy will be of interest to anyone committed to improving and understanding education in America. The contributors show us how the sites where we teach and learn are linked to the pedagogical process and to our conceptualization of teaching. Through these essays, we come to see how disciplinary assumptions, curricular expectations, physical configurations of space, institutional culture, and immediate participants impact the conceptual frameworks that inform our teaching. The authors encourage teachers who have not critically examined the places where they teach to do so, and remind us that a sophisticated understanding of critical pedagogy is not tantamount to a progressive pedagogical practice.
This issue has been jointly edited by Walter Jacobs and Amy M. Lee of the University of Minnesota’s General College, and myself. The variety of styles found in this volume—from collaborative essay and collage to roundtable and manifesto—is to a great extent the result of their editorial vision. Working with Jacobs and Lee has confirmed my belief that inquiry into the sites of pedagogy should encourage petits recits as a vital complement to grand narratives. Taking our cue from Kant, the editors have found that studies of the site of pedagogical address without reference to specific examples are empty, while essays on particular situations lacking an eye toward critical theory are blind. The essays in this collection successfully balance these demands largely thanks to the influence of Jacobs and Lee. I thank them for their vital and engaged work on this issue. [End Page 5]
Looking ahead, two issues are in preparation. Theory Trouble (Vol. 11, Nos. 1–2) will be jointly edited by Ian Buchanan and myself. The essays in this issue will be concerned with the current and future status of theory in the humanities, and consider the following questions: Is theory in trouble? What are the sources of this trouble? What remains of theory? Has theory lost its relevancy and critical edge? How important is it for theory to ask self-reflexive questions about what it is and does? The deadline for submissions is now closed.
The second issue in preparation, Fiction’s Present (Vol. 12, No. 1), will be co-edited by R. M. Berry and myself. It begins with the assumption that the present inflection of fiction is Janus-faced, looking both forward to the novel’s radically changed political, economic, technological circumstances and backward to its history of achievement and failure. Does fiction that continues in the tradition of modernist innovation have any reality for emergent political groups and cultures? Can the novel react to the present demands of global capitalism without abandoning its formal distinctiveness? Suggested topics include: fiction’s medium; the present and representation; global narrative and heteroglossia; the avant garde and postcolonialism; and fiction and value. The deadline for this issue is 15 May 2003.
Finally, we would like to thank the University of Minnesota’s General College for their financial assistance in the publication of this volume. Special thanks also to Janet Albarado; to Nina Di Leo for maintaining our Web site; and to Christian Burk. In conclusion, as always, we would like to thank the advisory board for their help in the preparation of this issue.
Jeffrey R. Di Leo is Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Houston-Victoria. He is Editor and founder of the journal symploke and editor of Affiliations: Identity in Academic Culture (2003). He is also editor of a new book series published by the University of Nebraska Press entitled Class in America.
