Scholarly Inquiry
Corpus-involved Education and Learning in European Universities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shuo Zhao
A central tendency in these innovations is basing corpus on the educational needs of students in European universities. Corpus-involved education and learning optimizes the learning process of students, creating a stimulating and active learning environment. A logical step in placing students at the center of their education is involving them in quality control, organization, and development of curricula based on corpus learning. Opportunities for student participation in curriculum planning and organization are given, including advantages and possible disadvantages of corpus involvement. Implications for European private university faculties wishing to incorporate students in their corpus organization are discussed to improve students’ input. Present developments in European universities increasingly focus on the central role of students in education and learning. A logical step in these developments is to give students responsibilities not just in the learning process but also in curriculum education and in the management of universities. Students in higher education, after all, are adults. Corpus-involved systems in quality control prove students to be distinctly capable of assuming shared responsibilities in management and organization of education and learning. The most important action students must take is to organize them in learning process. Combining corpus is a certain means of upgrading the quality of student input. Second, students must be prepared to participate in the evaluations provided by the teaching staff. They must also make themselves available for education and training in universities. Finally, students should take every opportunity to voice their opinions and ideas by means of a corpus-involved system.
Interdisciplinarity, Research Funding, and Academic Freedom in African Scholarship
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ibanga B. Ikpe
Interdisciplinarity has recently become a preferred and highly recommended approach to research in African Universities and Research Centres, especially where the research focus can benefit from different disciplinary approaches. But whereas the move towards interdisciplinary research in other places has been to engender the convergence of theoretical perspectives and methodologies, its driving force in many African universities has been funding. The common reasoning is that it is more cost effective to support interdisciplinary research since the same funding can be used by many researchers and as such garner a higher per capita research participation for such cash injection than would otherwise be the case. This paper discusses the ethics of this approach to interdisciplinarity and its implications for academic freedom, taking into account the objectives of interdisciplinary research. It situates collaborative research funding within the current corporatization and commercialization of universities and research centres and answers the question as to whether the emphasis on funding as a motive for interdsicilplinarity necessarily devalues academic freedom and the quality of research. It argues that despite its illegitimate birth, interdisciplinarity should not viewed as anti-academic freedom or as delegitimizing research collaboration and the cross pollination of ideas that it fosters. It concludes that academic freedom can still be maintained alongside collaborative research where funding constraints makes such intersections inevitable.
A Critical Anthropology of SRHR Development in Bangladesh : Towards a More Inclusive, Politically-Sensitive and Ethical Conversation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rahil Roodsaz
This paper engages with the politics of sex education as promoted through international aid and development. Probing this field of intervention reveals not only strong reiterations of modernist linear thinking and colonial continuities but also provides insights in the complexities of the reception and vernacularization of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Conceiving the international development context as an arena of collision and concession made to the demands of the hegemonic order as well as of strategic and creative translation and subversion, I will make a case for a critical anthropology of sexuality in international aid and development interventions. Focusing on a project to promote sex education in Bangladesh financed by Dutch agencies, the need for situating this intervention within specific transnational and local web of power relations will be argued. Furthermore, drawing inspiration from anticolonial feminist scholarship to move beyond deconstruction, a critical anthropological approach will be proposed to enable a more inclusive, politically-sensitive and ethical conversation about sexuality and development.
Reconfiguration of Literary Theory in the 21st Century
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Suradech Chotiudompant
The death of literary theory has been announced many times. Critics such as Terry Eagleton and Martin McQuillan have written essays on post-theory or the situations ‘after theory’ - as if the age of theory in which poststructuralism and deconstruction were buzzwords was drawing to a close. However, there are counternarratives. For example, Vincent B. Leitch published a book called Literary Criticism in the 21st Century with the subtitle of Theory Renaissance, claiming that theory has already made a comeback. In this paper, I explore how, and under which guise, the return to theory has been formulated through the analysis of the changing circumstances regarding the renewed foundational concepts of spatiality, temporality, and identity politics. It is my argument that various turns we have experienced since the turn of the millennia, be they the affective turn, the spatial turn, or the posthuman turn, have been part and parcel of these configurational changes. In other words, literary theory might not disappear, but has been reformulated and reconfigured in the framework of these changing conditions.
