Arts and Humanities in Higher Education current issue

Editorial: Boundaries, Signature Pedagogies and Theorizing

Parker, J., Chambers, E., Huber, M., Phipps, A. — 2008-05-20

Lost Horizons: The Humanities in South Africa (Part 1)

Vale, P. — 2008-05-20

Politics chartered the development of the Humanities in South Africa. Under the apartheid system three separate traditions — English-speaking, Afrikaner and Homeland —co-existed, albeit uneasily, in separate institutional forms. As apartheid crumbled in the 1980s, the Humanities, by drawing the three traditions together, established a growing voice in what would follow its demise. But the Humanities were blind-sided by the rise and power of neo-liberal globalization which now commands the discourse on public policy in the `New' South Africa. The `New' South Africa is different from what was once imagined, and Humanities are on the back foot.

Boundaries of Humanities: Writing Medical Humanities

Bolton, G. — 2008-05-20

Literature and medicine is a discipline within medical humanities, which challenges medicine to reconfigure its scientific model to become interdisciplinary, and be disciplined by arts and humanities as well as science. The psychological, emotional, spiritual and physical are inextricably linked in people, inevitably entailing provisionality, disturbance and lack of certainty, and lack of closure and therefore of control. Arts and humanities approaches can foster significant interpretive enquiry into illness, disability, suffering, and care. Reflective expressive writing, undertaken and engaged with critically, and particularly when explorative of narrative and metaphor, can enable professionally developmental enquiry into values, ethics, identity and responsibilities. This article offers examples of reflexivity, reflection, and disciplined questioning of the narrative and perspectival nature of medical and healthcare clinicians' experience. Creative writing is a focus, as art can observe and connect from unconventional angles.

Teaching English for Special Purposes in Iran: Problems and suggestions

Hayati, A. M. — 2008-05-20

The academic requirement for students majoring in fields other than English to pass English for Special or Specific Purposes (ESP) courses at university level has led to a rapid growth of such classes in Iran. However, despite this growth, not much literature on the practical aspects of these classes is available. The aim of the present article is to throw light on the problems of teaching ESP in Iran, beginning with a discussion of some key notions about the discipline. After evaluating the problems of ESP programs, some practical suggestions for improvement are made.

Cross-currents of Pedagogy and Technology: A Forum on Digital Storytelling and Cultural Critique: Introduction

Coventry, M. — 2008-05-20

Digital Storytelling and American Studies: Critical trajectories from the emotional to the epistemological

Oppermann, M. — 2008-05-20

In recent years, digital storytelling has emerged as an alternative medium of knowledge production for students in American studies. A growing number of faculty are creating assignments which combine methodological markers of American studies and reinvented notions of critical pedagogy in a multimedia learning environment. Based on an analysis of student learning and interviews with student producers of digital stories, this essay investigates the potential of digital storytelling for the development of voice and intellectual depth at the intersection of affective and cognitive dimensions of learning. Evidence from student-produced digital stories suggests that affective developmental processes can enable epistemological expertise instead of opposing it. In the same way, the multimedia authoring process does not obscure traditional forms of expert research and scholarship, but makes expert strategies visible and explicit.

Digital Storytelling as a Signature Pedagogy for the New Humanities

Benmayor, R. — 2008-05-20

This essay argues that digital storytelling is a hybrid, multimedia narrative form that enables critical and creative theorizing. As an assets-based social pedagogy, digital storytelling constructs a safe and empowering space for cross-cultural collaboration and learning. As illustration, the essay analyzes in detail one student story, using as primary evidence the story script, visual images from the digital story, and excerpts from a recorded interview with the author. It concludes that the process of digital story making and theorizing empowers and transforms students intellectually, creatively and culturally. Thus, digital storytelling can be seen as a signature pedagogy for the new Humanities in the 21st century.

Engaging Gender: Student application of theory through digital storytelling

Coventry, M. — 2008-05-20

Enabling students' engagement with gender theory can be a difficult task. One of the best ways to help students learn difficult conceptual material, such as theoretical texts, is to provide them with opportunities to state and restate those ideas in multiple ways and through multiple means. Digital storytelling provides an effective pedagogy that enhances this process of stating and restating, forcing students to express themselves in the `new language' of multimedia. Through a detailed reading of one student's work the essay proposes a taxonomy for novice uses of theory, ranging from summary to development of theoretical symbols. I then argue that digital storytelling uniquely enables students to illustrate and apply difficult conceptual material. In some cases, the visual form can even open up new possibilities for the application and refinement of concepts.

Slowing Down, Talking Back, and Moving Forward: Some reflections on digital storytelling in the humanities curriculum

Leon, S. M. — 2008-05-20

Humanities teachers in higher education strive to locate and implement pedagogical approaches that allow our students to deepen their inquiry, to make significant intellectual connections, and to carry those questions and insights across the curriculum. Digital storytelling is one of those pedagogical approaches. Digital storytelling can create an intervention in the educational experience of students from a variety of perspectives and at a variety of levels. The process of slowing down to create purposefully in the new medium of the digital story, through timing, imagery, music and narrative, has enabled students to position themselves in the cultural and theoretical conversation. Claiming that space of authority, they are not only better situated to read and respond to others' work, but also to create their own.