This article explores the interface of multiple legal systems in early modern Daghestan. By comparing colonial engagements with legal plurality with indigenous genres of Daghestani legal discourse, I aim to shed light on the plurality of legal systems that preceded as well as informed legal discourse under colonialism. The Daghestani turn to…[Read more]

This discussion of Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kāvya Literature (2014), a magisterial contribution to South Asian literature edited by Yigal Bronner, David Shulman, and Gary Tubb, situates this work within broader trends within the discipline of comparative literature and cross-cultural poetics. I consider how this volume…[Read more]

American Muslims increasingly negotiate their relation to a government that is suspicious of Islam, yet which recognizes them as rights-bearing citizens, within a culture they claim as their own. To better understand how the post-9/11 state is reshaping American Islam, I examine the case of Muslim American dissident Tarek Mehanna, sentenced to…[Read more]

This paper assesses nine prominent readings of the imperial context/content of Verdi’s ‘Aida’ and offers a new perspective more adequate to basic tensions in the work. Readings have ranged from the literal (imperial Europe here stages an archaeological “ancient Egypt”) to the metaphorical (“Egypt” here is any repressive government). Or–somew…[Read more]

Commentators often express disappointment that the music for the main characters in _Aida_ is not more distinctive, i.e., does not make much use of the exotic styles that mark the work’s ceremonial scenes and ballets. It has also been argued that exotic style-elements here are mostly confined to female, hence powerless, characters. Such…[Read more]

The Public Philosophy Journal’s 2018 New Engaged Scholars Digital Pilot Program, which officially kicks off on February 7th, is designed for doctoral students seeking guided, collaborative opportunities to develop early drafts into publishable content. This is the program agenda.

Reading is a complex and difficult skill. The main difficulty beginning readers face is learning which letters represent which sounds—and then getting used to those patterns by reading them, again and again, in different combinations and contexts. It takes practice to learn how to read. Research also shows that the easier reading is, the more l…[Read more]

El presente trabajo versa en el diseño, implementación y evaluación de dos actividades de aprendizaje vinculadas con el contenido temático de asignaturas que se imparten en diferentes licenciaturas en instituciones de educación superior. El diseño de estas actividades se basa en las “Normas de competencia para el acceso y uso de la informa…[Read more]

This paper highlights the multiple modalities through which writer, activist, and educator June Jordan materialized a placemaking pedagogy, grounded in the art of structural critique and using language in the service of social change. In this paper, I show how Jordan “implicitly instructs” her students and young readers in cultivating a str…[Read more]

Originally published in Write 4 Children Vol IV issue II 81-8, no longer available online.

University of East London is based in London Borough of Newham, one of the most diverse boroughs in Britain, with one of the highest levels of child poverty (ONS 2012, Campaign to End Child Poverty 2012). Trainee teachers on the Primary with English route…[Read more]

A clean copy of the Theory Palette http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6581T, this (almost) blank canvas is open to artistic and textual interventions, variations, and compositions with the intersecting concerns of author, history, culture, psyche, text, reader, literature, language, and embodiment/perception as blendable paint colors.

Evoking the creative messiness of an artist’s palette, this Theory Palette depicts nine theoretical concerns as intersecting, blendable paint colors: author, history, culture, psyche, text, reader, literature, language, and embodiment/perception. Just as painters in the same school, theorists blend colors to create their own compositions, s…[Read more]

This infographic illustrates the PPJ Formative Peer Review process from start to finish.

The terms ‘fandom’, ‘fan’, and even ‘fan studies’ appear to be, at first glance, self- evident. But considered in the context of both fan cultures and scholarship outside the English language-centered West, we begin to see the assumptions that underlie them. Whether we are talking about Japanese fans of manga and anime (somewhat codified it…[Read more]

A look at the role Democrats played in the formation of Philadelphia’s (now defunct!) School Reform Commission.

How do we learn the link between speech and money? What is the process of formation that
legitimates the logic whereby speech is equivalent to money? What are the experiences, events, and subjectivities
that render the connection between currency and speaking/listening intuitive? As educators and researchers,
what do we do and say to shore up…[Read more]