Reclaim Your Self: The Complexity of Identity by Andrew Malionek is now available from The Humanities imprint.
Socrates once asked the simple question - “Who am I?” For thousands of years, philosophers, theologians, scientists and psychologists have contemplated the answer to this question. In a modern world filled with distractions, an individual is more prone to disillusionment. Self-knowledge, the foundation for physical, spiritual, and mental growth, nurtures confidence and builds a defense system against despair. Awareness and knowledge of the self is crucial to proper overall development.
The author examines definitions of the self given by physicalists, scientific realists and the cognitive method of Bernard Lonergan, S.J. who defines the self as a rational and spiritual being. Examples of near-death experiences and temporal lobe epilepsy will be used to help explain the different theories.
The author thoroughly discusses the importance of self-knowledge in every dimension of human growth and encourages the reader to reclaim the desire to know the self.
The eleventh issue of Volume 7 of The International Journal of the Humanities has now been published.
Volume 7, Number 11 includes:
Congratulations to Jodie Parys, the winner of the International Award for Excellence in the area of new directions in the humanities for her paper Confronting HIV/AIDS through an Erotic Rewriting of the Classic Fairy Tale Rapunzel in Andrea Blanqué’s “Adiós, Ten Ying”
Abstract: Fiction has often served as a space in which to confront, record and archive the AIDS epidemic in diverse manners. Writers frequently use the pages of their texts to challenge societal expectations and perceptions about the disease. Andrea Blanqué’s short story, “Adiós, Ten-Ying” is one such approach. Through a post-modern, feminist reworking of the classic fairytale, Rapunzel, Blanqué subverts reader expectations about AIDS and sexuality by presenting a protagonist who initially evokes the familiar storyline of Rapunzel, but ultimately becomes an icon of sexual liberation in the face of a patriarchal society that would prefer to negate her existence as an AIDS-infected prostitute. Blanqué achieves this subversion and ultimate celebration of sexuality by using a narrative structure that is reminiscent of the well-known tale, but is manipulated at key moments to challenge taboos about sexuality and AIDS. This presentation will examine this reworking to illustrate how Blanqué produces a novel approach to the classic fairy tale and ultimately provides an enlightened perspective on HIV/AIDS vis-a-vis her feminist interpretation of coming of age in the face of HIV/AIDS.
If you have read the paper you may wish to add a review.
Only A God Can Save Us: Heidegger, Poetic Imagination and the Modern Malaise by Henk J. Van Leeuwen is now available from The Humanities imprint.
In the shadow of a looming global environmental catastrophe humanity is at an unprecedented crossroad where crucial and difficult decisions must be made about how we are to live. This book questions where the desire for certainty and mastery is taking us and argues that reliance on technology and information alone cannot avoid an ecological catastrophe. It attends to an existential poverty of spirit that, it suggests, is at the root of contemporary problems. It tackles the association between a metaphysical void, with its growing sense of meaninglessness, and the ecological predicament.
While many find the consolations of traditional religion increasingly untenable, a hunger for a spiritual dimension in life persists. In a rare excursion, yet one which continues the uniquely human search for a transcendent ground of being, the book explores an unfamiliar kind of thinking which shelters and liberates the poetic imagination that counters the modern malaise. In a scholarly yet accessible account van Leeuwen uncovers from Martin Heidegger’s middle/late philosophy an extraordinary pathway of transformative thinking where this imagination is nurtured.
Continue reading ‘Only A God Can Save Us’
Common Ground Publishing have relaunched The Humanities imprint.
You can now submit proposals or completed manuscript submissions of:
Books should be between 30,000 words and 150,000 words in length. They will be published simultaneously in print and electronic formats.
Congratulations to Dr Judy Lattas, the winner of the International Award for Excellence in the area of the area of new directions in the humanities for her paper Dear Learner: Shame and the Dialectics of Enquiry
Paper abstract: In this paper I contemplate the potential of Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) to lead the teaching of humanities in Australian universities. Are there internal constraints on its happy unfolding for a future of the humanities, true to its intellectual and political projects? In its favour, the proponents of EBL cite an Enlightenment ideal of ‘enquiry’ that puts the highest value on creative, open ended and self-determined thought – a pursuit of knowledge that is not limited by the interests of any professional or economic class. These same proponents of EBL, however, are often in university positions assigned the task of bringing a more instrumentalist approach to the pursuit of knowledge. Is it all just a case of Orwellian double-speak? Probyn (2005) writes about shame as a powerful and productive state that enables us to reappraise our actions and our values. In my paper I call up two moments of shame in the recent pursuit of learning and teaching excellence at my university, in order to explore the politics of an emerging rhetoric in this arena: that of ‘learning without teaching.’
Some papers of interest which were published in The International Journal of the Humanities include papers by plenary presenters at the conference:
World Strangers: Expatriation, Global Society, and the Humanities by A. Pablo Iannone.
What Obstacle does the Scientific Account of Consciousness Face? Can they be overcome? by Norehan Zulkiply, Mohamad Raduan Kabit and Kartini Abd Ghani.
