Albert Cohen : Dissonant Voices / / Jack I. Abecassis

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910524846803321
• Autore: Abecassis Jack I. <1959->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Baltimore : , : Johns Hopkins University Press, , 2004; ©2004
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xvii, 246 pages)
• Collana: Parallax.
• Disciplina: 843/.912
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Sommario/riassunto: Honorable Mention winner in the Modern Language Association's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize competition for French and Francophone Literary StudiesA major figure in twentieth-century letters, Albert Cohen (1895–1981) left a paradoxical legacy. His heavily autobiographical, strikingly literary, and polyphonic novels and lyrical essays are widely read by a devout public in France, yet have been largely ignored by academia. A self-consciously Jewish writer and activist, Cohen remained nevertheless ambivalent about Judaism. His self-affirmation as a Jew in juxtaposition with his satirical use of anti-Semitic stereotypes still provokes unease in both republican France and institutional Judaism.In Albert Cohen: Dissonant Voices, the first English-language study of this profound and profoundly misunderstood writer, Jack I. Abecassis traces the recurrent themes of Cohen's works. He reveals the dissonant fractures marking Cohen as a modernist, and analyzes the resistance to his work as a symptom of the will not to understand Cohen's main theme—"the catastrophe of being Jewish."For Abecassis, Cohen's diverse oeuvre forms a single "roman fleuve" exploring this perturbing theme through fragmentation and grotesquerie, fantasies and nightmares, the veiling and unveiling of the unspeakable.Abecassis argues that Cohen should not be read exclusively through the prism of European literature (Stendhal, Tolstoy, Proust), but rather as the retelling—inverting and ultimately ; exhausting, in the form of submerged plots—of the Biblical romances of Joseph and Esther. The romance of the charismatic Court Jew and its performance correlative, the carnival of Purim, generate the logic of Cohen's acute psychological ambivalence, historical consciousness and carnal sensuality—themes which link this modernist author to Genesis as well as to the literary practices of Sephardic crypto-Jews. Abecassis argues that Cohen's best-known work, Belle du Seigneur (1968), besides being an obvious tale of obsessive love and dissolution, is foremost a tale of political intrigue involving Solal, the meteoric-rising Jew in the League of Nations during the period of Appeasement (1936), and his ultimate self-destruction. Providing close readings and imaginative analyses of the entire literary output of one of twentieth-century France's most important Jewish writers, Abecassis presents here a major work of literary scholarship, as well as a broader study of the reception and influence of Jewish thought in French literature and philosophy.

"Doing school" : how we are creating a generation of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students / / Denise Clark Pope

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910777827803321
• Autore: Pope Denise Clark <1966->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New Haven, Connecticut : , : Yale University Press, , [2001]; ©2001
• ISBN: 1-281-73072-6; 9786611730727; 0-300-13058-9
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xvii, 212 pages)
• Disciplina: 373.18
• Soggetti: Academic achievement - United States; High school students - United States; Student aspirations - United States
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-212).
• Nota di contenuto: Welcome to Faircrest High -- Kevin Romoni : A 3.8 kind of guy -- Pleasing dad : The "good" student -- Getting furious : The competitor -- Motivated by passion : The engaged learner -- Eve Lin : Life as a high school machine -- "Going for the maximum" -- Survival of the fittest -- Enjoying the process -- Teresa Gomez : "I want a future" -- Dancing as engagement -- "Wanting more" : The search for engagement -- Michelle Spence : Keeping curiosity alive? -- An alternate course -- "Sacrificing academics" -- Learning by doing what you love -- Roberto Morales : When values stand in the way -- Diligence -- Anxiety -- Playing by the rules -- Stress -- "Fun" -- The predicament of "doing school" -- "Doing school" -- The grade trap -- Constraints of the school system -- We get what we bargain for -- "If only things could be different" -- Epilogue -- Appendixes -- General information about the students in the study -- Common student behavior exhibited in pursuit of success.
• Sommario/riassunto: This book offers a revealing-and troubling-view of today's high school students and the ways they pursue high grades and success. Veteran teacher Denise Pope follows five highly regarded students through a school year and discovers that these young people believe getting ahead requires manipulating the system, scheming, lying, and cheating. On the one hand, they work hard in school, participate in extracurricular activities, serve their communities, earn awards and honors, and appear to uphold school values. But on the other hand, they feel that in order to get ahead they must compromise their values and manipulate the system by scheming, lying, and cheating. In short, they "do school"-that is, they are not really engaged with learning nor can they commit to such values as integrity and community. The words and actions of these five students-two boys and three girls from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds-underscore the frustrations of being caught in a "grade trap" that pins future success to high grades and test scores. Their stories raise critical questions that are too important for parents, educators, and community leaders to ignore. Are schools cultivating an environment that promotes intellectual curiosity, cooperation, and integrity? Or are they fostering anxiety, deception, and hostility? Do today's schools inadvertently impede the very values they claim to embrace? Is the "success" that current assessment practices measure the kind of success we want for our children?