Critical Race Theory

Although long considered the most distinctive American contribution to philosophy, pragmatism-with its problem-solving emphasis and its contingent view of truth-lost popularity in mid-century after the advent of World War II, the horror of the Holocaust, and the dawning of the Cold War. Since the 1960s, however, pragmatism in many guises has again gained prominence, finding congenial places to flourish within growing intellectual movements. This volume of new essays brings together leading philosophers, historians, legal scholars, social thinkers, and literary critics to examine the far-reaching effects of this revival.As the twenty-five intellectuals who take part in this discussion show, pragmatism has become a complex terrain on which a rich variety of contemporary debates have been played out. Contributors such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nancy Fraser, Robert Westbrook, Hilary Putnam, and Morris Dickstein trace pragmatism's cultural and intellectual evolution, consider its connection to democracy, and discuss its complex relationship to the work of Emerson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. They show the influence of pragmatism on black intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, explore its view of poetic language, and debate its effects on social science, history, and jurisprudence. Also including essays by critics of the revival such as Alan Wolfe and John Patrick Diggins, the volume concludes with a response to the whole collection from Stanley Fish.Including an extensive bibliography, this interdisciplinary work provides an in-depth and broadly gauged introduction to pragmatism, one that will be crucial for understanding the shape of the transformations taking place in the American social and philosophical scene at the end of the twentieth century.Contributors: Richard Bernstein, David Bromwich, Ray Carney, Stanley Cavell, Morris Dickstein, John Patrick Diggins, Stanley Fish, Nancy Fraser, Thomas C. Grey, Giles Gunn, Hans Joas, James T. Kloppenberg, David Luban, Louis Menand, Sidney Morgenbesser, Richard Poirier, Richard A. Posner, Ross Posnock, Hilary Putnam, Ruth Anna Putnam, Richard Rorty, Michel Rosenfeld, Richard H. Weisberg, Robert B. Westbrook, Alan Wolfe

Contents and Contributors"Introduction: Challenges and Invitations for Composition Studies in the New Millennium" by Donald A. Daiker"Three Mysteries at the Heart of Writing" by Peter Elbow"The Great Paradigm Shift and its Legacy for the Twenty-First Century" by Lynn Z. Bloom"Why Composition Studies Disappeared and What Happened Then" by Susan Miller"No Discipline? Composition's Professional Identity Crisis" by Christine Farris"Because Teaching Composition Is (Still) Mostly about Teaching Composition" by Wendy Bishop"Education for Irrelevance? Or, Joining Our Colleagues in Lit Crit on the Sidelines of the Information Age" by Kurt Spellmeyer"The Juggler" by Brenda Jo Brueggemann"Reimagining the Landscape of Composition in the Twenty-First Century: Contingent Faculty and the Profession" by Art Young"Twenty-First-Century Composition: The Two-Year College Perspective" by Mark Reynolds"Vertical Writing Programs in Departments of Rhetoric and Writing" by Ellen Cushman"Ethics and the Future of Composition Research" by Gesa E. Kirsch"A Methodology of Our Own" by Todd Taylor"Celebrating Diversity in Methodology" by Susan H. McLeod"Under the Radar of Composition Programs: Glimpsing the Future Through Case Studies of Literacy in Electronic Contexts" by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Joseph Johansen, Cynthia L. Selfe, and John C. Williams Jr."The Challenge of the Multimedia Essay" by Lester Faigley"Multimedia Literacy: Confessions of a Nonmajor" by Christine M. Neuwirth"Composition's Word Work: Deliberating How to Do Language" by Min-Zahn Lu"Working with Difference: Critical Race Studies and the Teaching of Composition" by Gary A. Olson"From Classroom to Program" by Joseph Harris"Composition and theCritical Moment" by Keith Gilyard"The Uses of Literacy in a Globalized, Post--September 11 World" by Harriet Malinowitz"Teaching after September 11" by Richard E. Miller"Conclusion: Everything Has Changed; Nothing Has Changed" by

Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public schools in the United States. While the essays provide an overview of education and schooling issues, the overarching concern is that public schools are under attack and deserve to be defended.